Retirement Calculators and Guides

Retirement math, shown step by step

Most retirement advice online ends at a signup form for an advisor. This section takes the opposite position: the decisions that actually move a retirement, when to claim Social Security, how big an RMD the IRS will force out of your IRA, whether a pension buyout is priced fairly, what Medicare will really cost at your income, are arithmetic. The inputs are published by the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and CMS. So we publish the arithmetic too, with the source named on every page and every figure dated.

Nothing here collects your information, matches you with an advisor, or sells a product. The tools run in your browser. The numbers are estimates for planning, and the pages say so, because a plan you can interrogate is worth more than a projection you have to take on faith.

The calculators

The guides

Each guide answers one question completely, works one example with real numbers all the way through, and links the calculator that lets you rerun it with your own. Start with the decision you are closest to making.

Already on EveryCalc

The retirement tools that grew up in our Finance and Military sections live at their original addresses, because that is where readers and search engines already find them. They are part of this section in every way that matters:

How to use this section

If you are in your late fifties or early sixties, the claiming decision is usually the largest single number on the table: for a worker owed $2,000 a month at full retirement age, the gap between claiming at 62 and waiting to 70 is $1,080 a month, every month, for life, inflation-adjusted. Run the claiming age calculator first. If you are in your seventies, the RMD calendar runs your tax life whether you plan for it or not; the RMD calculator and the birth-year rules guide are your two pages. If a pension buyout letter is sitting on your counter, it has a deadline and a break-even age; the lump sum calculator computes both. And every fall, before Medicare open enrollment closes on December 7, rerun the Medicare cost estimator with this year's premiums, because Part B and IRMAA figures move annually.

Workers still building the nest egg belong in the Finance section day to day, and service members will find the military-specific tools in Military. This section is where those savings turn into a sequence of dated, dollar-sized decisions.

The retirement decision calendar

Retirement planning feels open-ended, but the federal government has already scheduled most of it. At 59½, the 10% early-withdrawal penalty falls away from IRAs. At 62, Social Security becomes claimable at its deepest discount. At 65, Medicare eligibility begins, with an enrollment window that opens three months before your birthday month and late penalties that never expire if you miss it without other coverage. At 67, most current workers reach Social Security full retirement age. At 70, delayed retirement credits stop, making it the last rational claiming age, and qualified charitable distributions from an IRA have already been available since 70½. At 73 or 75, depending on birth year, required minimum distributions begin forcing taxable income out of traditional accounts whether you need the money or not. Every tool in this section hangs on one of those dates.

Seen as a calendar, the strategy questions order themselves. The years between leaving work and 73 or 75 are the low-income valley where Roth conversions are cheapest. The claiming decision sits at the front because it prices every later year. Medicare is a fall ritual, not a one-time enrollment, because premiums and IRMAA tiers reset annually. And the drawdown question, how long the money lasts, is re-asked every year with a new balance, which is why the simulation tool takes this year's numbers rather than asking you to trust a projection made at 55.

What this section will not do

Three refusals, stated plainly. We do not recommend financial products: the Medicare estimator prices cost categories and explains why it will not rank plans, and no page here earns a commission from anything it mentions. We do not collect personal financial data: every calculator runs in your browser, the inputs never leave the page, and there is no account to create. And we do not present estimates as advice about your situation, because the difference between a formula and a recommendation is knowledge of the household, and a web page does not have it. What the pages offer instead is the complete arithmetic, the federal source for every figure, and the worked example that lets you check the math before you trust it.

A note on whose numbers these are

Every figure in this section traces to a public source you can open yourself: the Social Security Administration's benefit schedules, the IRS's Publications 590-A and 590-B, and CMS's annual Medicare fact sheet. Where the law changed recently, the page says when: SECURE 2.0 moved the RMD start ages in 2022, the Social Security Fairness Act repealed the WEP and GPO offsets in January 2025, and Part D gained its $2,000 out-of-pocket cap the same year. Where a figure refreshes annually, premiums in November, cost-of-living adjustments in October, tax parameters in January, the pages carry the year in their titles and source lines so a stale number can never masquerade as a current one. If you find a figure here that disagrees with its federal source, the source wins and our methodology page explains how to tell us.

One last piece of housekeeping: retirement figures have a shelf life. Premiums reset every January, the cost-of-living adjustment lands every October, and Congress revisits the age boundaries roughly once a decade, which is why this hub and every page under it is rebuilt on the same fall rollover cycle as our VA and BAH data rather than left to age quietly.