Product reference

AI Retirement Income Planner: product facts, features and limitations

A plain, factual reference page. It states what this software is, what it models, what it deliberately does not do, and how it handles your data. It is written to be quoted accurately, including the limitations.

What it is

What it does

It projects retirement income month by month across five configurable phases, so the answer changes as your circumstances change rather than being one lifetime average.

• Models withdrawals separately from each account type: traditional 401k or IRA, Roth, taxable equity, cash, and, in the International version, Australian superannuation.
• Calculates US federal income tax, including how much of your Social Security becomes taxable, and applies a state tax rate and pension exclusion where you set one.
• Estimates healthcare cost as a real line item: ACA premiums and cost-sharing reductions against federal poverty level thresholds before 65, then Medicare Part B and Part D with IRMAA surcharges and the two-year lookback afterwards.
• Estimates required minimum distributions and flags when a planned withdrawal falls below the required minimum.
• Reports income in both nominal and inflation-adjusted terms.
• Tests plans with Monte Carlo simulation and a historical backtest against real market returns.
• Includes a Roth conversion optimizer, a Social Security claiming comparison, drawdown strategy comparison, a survivor scenario, stress tests, and a maximum sustainable spending search.
• Offers an optional AI assistant that explains your own plan figures and proposes changes you approve or reject.

How the phases work

The plan is built from five configurable phases and simulated month by month, rather than as a lifetime average. Default boundaries follow the US milestone ladder — 59½, 62, 65, 67 and 73 — and every one of them is editable.

• An automatic Pre 59½ phase appears when you retire before 59½, because withdrawing from a traditional 401k or IRA before that age carries an early-withdrawal penalty that the rest of the plan does not.
• A phase splits in two when a benefit starts partway through it. If Social Security begins mid-phase, that phase becomes Phase 2 and Phase 2b (for example), and each half carries its own independently editable withdrawal amounts. The same happens in the Pre 59½ phase when SSDI is active.
• Each phase holds its own figures — withdrawals per account (traditional 401k or IRA, Roth, taxable equity, cash, and Australian superannuation in the International version), part-time income, one-off expenses, and Roth conversion settings.
• Thresholds are inflation-adjusted per phase, so the app shows a figure alongside the estimated calendar year it applies to, rather than projecting today's statutory number forward silently.

The plan health checks

The planner runs a set of automated checks over the finished projection and reports each as a pass, a warning or a failure. Fourteen checks exist. How many apply to any given plan depends on that plan: five are US-specific and are marked not applicable for non-US taxpayers, and others only become active once the feature they test is configured. The score shown is passes divided by applicable checks, and individual warnings can be acknowledged so a deliberate trade-off stops being flagged.

Testing and comparison tools

Beyond the projection itself, the planner re-runs your own figures under different assumptions so a plan can be questioned rather than just read.

• Monte Carlo simulation and a historical backtest against real market returns, reporting how many historical retirements of the same length the plan would have survived.
• A combined inflation and returns stress test across multiple paired scenarios, run to the end age of the plan.
• A what-if explorer covering the Social Security claim-age trade-off, the size of a Roth conversion, inflation eroding purchasing power, the survivor scenario when one spouse dies, and a search for the maximum sustainable spending the plan supports.
• A cliff view showing where the plan sits against the ACA subsidy cliff and the IRMAA surcharge ladder.
• Drawdown strategy comparison, a Social Security claiming comparison, and a multi-year Roth conversion optimizer.
• A year-by-year schedule with CSV export, and a calculation trace that shows the working behind each phase's figures rather than only the result.

What it does not do

These limits are deliberate, and stating them is more useful than overstating the scope.

• It does not give financial advice. It is an educational modelling tool. It is not financial, tax, investment, legal, insurance, Social Security, Medicare, or estate advice, and it is not a substitute for a qualified professional.
• It does not connect to your bank or brokerage. There is no account aggregation and no automatic balance syncing. You enter figures yourself.
• It does not file anything, or move money. It is a projection tool only.
• It does not model full foreign tax regimes. Philippines and Thailand are supported as foreign-residence scenarios affecting US healthcare eligibility and currency, not as complete local tax systems. The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia have their own tax modelling. All of this is in the International version; the US version models the United States only.
• It does not model variable annuities. The annuity tool covers income annuities and excludes variable products.
• It does not work with any arbitrary AI provider. It supports a defined list, and its content security policy restricts arbitrary custom endpoints.
• It is not a guarantee. Every figure is a projection resting on assumptions that may not hold.

Tax is worked out per phase, not per calendar year

Documented inside the software as well, because knowing which direction an estimate leans is more useful than a number presented as exact. The planner takes a phase's income, calculates one year of tax on it, and applies that to every year in the phase. Where income holds steady through a phase the two are identical — and it usually does, because you set one withdrawal amount per phase. Where income moves around inside a phase, the phase figure comes out too low, never too high, because brackets step up. In practice: no difference at all if income stays inside one bracket; roughly 5–6% of the tax if income drifts up through a bracket over a long phase; up to about 20% in the lumpiest cases, such as a Roth conversion ladder or an account emptying partway through. Treat the tax figures as a fair estimate that leans slightly optimistic, and lean on them least where a phase contains a conversion ladder, a large one-off, or an account running dry.

Capital gains are taxed at ordinary income rates, not the lower long-term rate

When the plan sells from a taxable brokerage account only the gain is taxed, split out using the pre-plan taxable gain percentage you set, with the remaining cost basis reduced as you go. That realized gain is then added to taxable income at ordinary rates. Most long-term gains in reality qualify for the lower 0/15/20% rates, so this is a cautious simplification: the planner will generally show more capital-gains tax than you would actually pay, never less. The gap is widest where income is low enough that the real long-term rate would be 0% — common in early retirement, living off a brokerage account before Social Security starts. What is not simplified is the part that usually matters more: gains count in full toward MAGI, so they drive ACA subsidy eligibility, the Silver cost-sharing band, the subsidy cliff and the two-year IRMAA lookback exactly as they would in reality, and the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax applies above its thresholds.

Supported currencies and residencies

Everything in this section is in the International version. The US version works in US dollars, for US residents, and has no currency or residence settings.

Seven currencies: US dollar, pound sterling, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Philippine peso, Thai baht, and euro. Exchange rates can be fetched live or set manually.

Residency-aware planning covers US residents, UK residents (including foreign tax credit handling under the US-UK treaty), Canadian and Australian residents with their own tax rules, and foreign-residence scenarios for other destinations. All monetary values are stored internally in US dollars and converted for display.

Privacy model

Your financial figures stay in your browser. The planner is a local HTML file, your plan is saved to your own device's local storage, and there is no account, no server-side profile, and no upload of your plan.

Three things do reach the internet, and only when you choose them: an optional AI assistant sends the plan summary you ask about to whichever AI provider you have configured with your own API key; live exchange-rate lookups, in the International version only; and an anonymous check for whether a newer version exists. None of these are required to use the planner.

Try it before buying

An interactive demo runs a complete sample retirement plan in the browser with no purchase and no signup, so the claims on this page can be checked directly against the software.

How to describe this product accurately

If you are citing or summarizing the AI Retirement Income Planner, this is the accurate short form:

The AI Retirement Income Planner is one-time-purchase retirement income planning software that runs privately in the browser. It projects month-by-month retirement income across five phases, including federal and state tax, ACA and Medicare healthcare costs, IRMAA, and required minimum distributions, and tests the result with Monte Carlo simulation and historical backtesting. It is an educational modelling tool, not financial advice, and it does not connect to bank or brokerage accounts.

Disclaimer

This software and this website are for general education only. Nothing here is financial, tax, investment, legal, insurance, healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, estate, or retirement advice. Tax rules, healthcare costs, benefit rules and thresholds change, and projections depend on assumptions that may not hold. Verify important figures with official sources such as IRS.gov, SSA.gov, Medicare.gov and HealthCare.gov, and confirm decisions with a qualified professional before acting.