All your retirement questions answered.

How long your money lasts is set mostly by how much you withdraw each year, but market returns can impact your income as well. The answer depends on five inputs: your current portfolio, monthly spending, Social Security or pension income, asset allocation, and the age you want the plan to pay income through.

Refined FI's Portfolio Longevity Calculator projects your balance year by year in today's dollars. It subtracts your spending at the beginning of each year, adds Social Security and pension income when those payments begin, then applies a long-run real return based on your mix of stocks, bonds, gold, and cash.

If the plan falls short, the calculator compares three ways to close the gap: spend less, change your stock allocation and portfolio risk, or shorten the planning horizon. You choose the number you want to keep fixed, and the calculator finds funded combinations of the other two.

Your next step: Divide your annual spending by your portfolio value to get your burn rate today, then run the calculator to see what that rate means for your actual timeline.

A burn rate above 7% is considered as high. Above 7%, a bad market early in retirement does damage that later good years cannot repair, even when the long-run math works out.

This is a planning estimate, not a guarantee. It uses constant long-run real returns rather than testing different market sequences, and actual returns may vary.

Calculate your burn rate by dividing the amount your portfolio must provide each year, after Social Security and pension income, by your current portfolio value. Refined FI flags a burn rate above 7% as high. Above 7%, a bad market early in retirement does damage that later good years cannot repair, even when the long-run math works out.

The Withdrawal Waterfall subtracts Social Security, pension, and earned income from annual spending to calculate the amount your portfolio must provide. It then builds an estimated current-year sequence using your accounts, tax profile, cash reserve, selected federal tax bracket, and withdrawal schedule.

The calculator accounts for required minimum distributions, qualified charitable distributions, qualified HSA spending, taxable gains, Roth withdrawals, and available cash above your chosen reserve. Its federal estimate applies the Social Security provisional-income thresholds, standard deduction and age-based additions, long-term capital-gains brackets, and net investment income tax. State and local estimates use available statutory brackets and retirement-income exclusions, but do not cover every exclusion or special rule.

Your next step: Measure your burn rate on net withdrawals first. If it is above 7%, do not assume the only answer is spending less. Part of every dollar you withdraw goes to taxes, and drawing from your accounts in the right order can shrink that part. A smaller tax bill means a smaller gross withdrawal for the same spending money, which lowers your burn rate on its own. Run the Withdrawal Waterfall to see what your order should be this year.

IRMAA generally uses income from two years earlier. The calculator uses published 2026 thresholds as a planning proxy because future thresholds are not yet known. The results are current-year educational estimates, not a portfolio-longevity forecast, tax preparation, or a promise of the lowest lifetime tax.

Your risk depends on how much you withdraw, how long withdrawals continue, inflation, your asset allocation, and the order in which market returns occur. An average return alone cannot tell you whether your portfolio will last.

The same annual returns arranged in a different order can produce a different result once withdrawals begin. Poor returns early in retirement leave you selling from a declining portfolio, reducing the balance available for later recoveries. This is sequence-of-returns risk, and it is the problem behind Retirement Income, Reinvented .

Refined FI's Portfolio Stress Test does not estimate your probability of running out of money. It answers a narrower question: would your entered portfolio and withdrawals have survived a specific historical sequence?

The test uses nominal annual returns for stocks, bonds, cash, and gold from 1928 through 2025. It applies your allocation to each year's returns, representing annual rebalancing, and then subtracts your withdrawal. When inflation indexing is enabled, withdrawals increase with historical inflation to maintain their purchasing power.

Your next step: Run several severe historical periods without changing your withdrawal or allocation. A plan that survives one sequence may fail another because each environment affects stocks, bonds, cash, and gold differently.

History is evidence, not a forecast. These scenarios are severe historical periods, but they are not necessarily the four worst sequences for every portfolio. A future sequence could be worse than anything in the 1928 to 2025 record.

Your retirement number is the estimated portfolio value you need when retirement begins. It must cover the part of your spending that Social Security and pension income do not cover through your planning age.

It is not a multiple of your salary. The calculator determines the portfolio's responsibility year by year:

retirement spending minus Social Security and pension income = amount the portfolio must provide

Income is subtracted only after its entered start age. Before then, the portfolio must fund the larger spending gap.

Refined FI's Retirement Number Calculator uses your current savings, contributions, retirement date, spending, guaranteed income, planning horizon, and asset allocation. It calculates the portfolio required at retirement, projects what you may have by then, and compares the two in today's dollars.

For a household, each person can have a different current age, retirement age, contribution amount, income amount, and income start age. Full household retirement spending begins when the first person retires. The other person's contributions continue until that person's retirement. If you are working that household number out as a couple, what a good monthly retirement income looks like for a couple walks the whole subtraction.

The planning horizon can come from the Social Security life table or an age you choose. Household plans can use a joint-last-survivor horizon based on both people's ages and selected life tables.

Your next step: Enter the spending you expect in retirement, then add Social Security and pension income with their start ages. The calculator will determine what your portfolio must cover and whether your current savings path may reach that target.

This is a deterministic planning estimate using real, after-inflation returns and today-dollar inputs. It does not model variable market sequences, earned income during retirement, taxes, or changes in survivor benefits.

You can retire when your projected portfolio is large enough to cover the part of your retirement spending that Social Security and pension income will not cover through your planning age. Refined FI's Retirement Number Calculator identifies the earliest age when your projected portfolio reaches that required amount.

A later retirement date generally gives your portfolio more time to grow and fewer years of spending to fund. An earlier date generally means less time to accumulate savings and a longer retirement horizon.

Refined FI's Retirement Number Calculator evaluates your planned retirement age first. If that plan is funded, it checks earlier ages and reports the earliest age at which your projected portfolio still reaches the recalculated target.

If the original plan has a funding gap, retirement age also becomes one of four planning levers. The calculator can compare funded combinations of retirement age, monthly saving, retirement spending, and portfolio risk.

For a household, retirement begins when the first person retires. The other person's contributions continue until that person's entered retirement age, and each person's Social Security or pension begins at the entered start age.

Your next step: Enter the retirement age you actually want and let the calculator test it. If the plan is already funded, check whether the same inputs support an earlier date before deciding to work longer.

This is a deterministic planning estimate in today's dollars, not a guaranteed retirement date. It does not model variable market sequences, earned income during retirement, taxes, or changes in survivor benefits.

You are on track when your projected portfolio at your planned retirement date meets or exceeds the portfolio target your retirement plan requires. If the projection is lower, the difference is your retirement funding gap. On why a single calculator answer is not enough on its own, see why one retirement calculator is not enough .

Being on track is not a permanent status. Your result can change whenever your life changes: new baby, job change, kids in college, or a big raise.

That is why Refined FI treats retirement planning as something you retest, not something you calculate once and lose. Your latest inputs, result, and calculation date save to your account. When you return, the same information is waiting, so you can change what changed in your life and immediately see what moved in the plan.

Refined FI also keeps dated progress snapshots showing how much of your retirement number the projection covered. Results more than a year old receive a Yearly Check-in reminder, and relevant profile changes flag the calculation for another run.

Your next step: Calculate your current target and projection together. Return whenever your life or plan changes, update the affected inputs, and compare the new result with the saved one.

This is a deterministic planning estimate in today's dollars. It does not model variable market sequences, earned income during retirement, taxes, or changes in survivor benefits.

You can close a retirement funding gap by changing one or more of four things: save more, retire later, spend less in retirement, or change how your portfolio is invested. The portfolio lever is the only one that costs nothing out of pocket, which is why it is worth checking first: how to catch up on retirement savings . For what that lever looks like inside a workplace plan, see what your 401(k) should actually hold .

Refined FI's Retirement Number Calculator tests those four levers against your actual funding gap.

When your current allocation is not aligned with the specific Refined FI portfolio for your stage, the calculator tests that change first. It compares the real return and funding gap produced by your current mix with the result produced by your ideal stage portfolio. It leads with alignment only when that change reduces the gap.

You choose the two inputs you want to keep unchanged. The calculator then maps funded combinations of the other two, allowing you to compare the actual trade-offs instead of receiving one prescribed answer. Applying a solution writes the selected values back into your retirement plan and recalculates the result.

The portfolio-risk lever will not increase your stock allocation beyond the applicable boundary. If your allocation is already at or above that limit, the calculator fixes the risk lever and explains that no additional expected return is available within the plan's risk boundary.

Your next step: Decide which two inputs are genuinely fixed. Then compare the funded combinations available from the other two.

This is a deterministic planning estimate in today's dollars. It does not model variable market sequences, earned income during retirement, taxes, or changes in survivor benefits.

You should invest the monthly amount required to put your projected portfolio on track for your retirement number. That amount comes from your retirement gap, not from a fixed percentage of income.

A second question is how much of that investment can receive tax advantages. That depends on your age, income, filing status, available workplace plan, HSA eligibility, employer match, and other account access.

A family HSA raises the HSA limit to $8,750. At age 50, the 401(k) catch-up adds $8,000 and the IRA catch-up adds $1,100. Between ages 60 and 63, the larger $11,250 workplace-plan catch-up replaces the standard $8,000 catch-up. An eligible HSA owner age 55 or older can contribute another $1,000.

These limits measure available capacity, not how much your retirement plan requires.

The second mode works from:

amount invested minus estimated tax savings = out-of-pocket cost

The calculator also includes eligible employer contributions when reporting the total invested, without treating employer money as part of your personal budget.

Your next step: Find the monthly saving your retirement plan requires, then enter that amount into the Contribution Waterfall. If take-home cost is the constraint, use the out-of-pocket mode to calculate how much can be invested at that cost.

This is an educational estimate using 2026 limits. Eligibility, deductions, Roth access, catch-up treatment, and HSA limits depend on your circumstances.

At minimum, contribute enough to receive your full employer match. After capturing the match, the optimal tax-efficient amount may be less than the annual 401(k) maximum, if you can contribute to an HSA directly from your paycheck.

An eligible HSA sits between those steps. HSA contributions made through payroll can avoid federal income tax, most state income tax, and payroll tax. Direct HSA contributions do not receive the payroll-tax savings. In the calculator's core sequence, the Roth IRA or Backdoor Roth comes after the remaining 401(k) employee limit.

The 403(b) shares those limits and adds a 15-year catch-up of its own; what to hold in a 403(b) covers the account and its menu.

The calculator currently uses entered income as a proxy for the prior-year wage test.

When the plan permits after-tax contributions and in-plan Roth conversions, the calculator measures Mega Backdoor Roth room against the 2026 Section 415(c) total-additions limit of $72,000 or compensation, whichever is lower. Regular employee contributions and employer contributions count toward that limit. Age-based catch-up contributions do not.

Your next step: Confirm both parts of your employer's match formula: how much the employer matches and the percentage of pay eligible for the match. Those inputs determine the first 401(k) contribution target.

This answers how much to contribute, not which investments to hold inside the plan. For that decision, see how to invest my 401(k) and what your 401(k) should actually hold .

This is an educational estimate using 2026 limits. Employer formulas and plan rules vary, and many plans do not allow after-tax contributions or in-plan Roth conversions.

An eligible HSA generally comes after contributing enough to receive your full employer match and before contributing the rest of your 401(k) limit.

Run that order against your own numbers with the HSA vs 401(k) Calculator , which puts the same contribution into every account and answers in years and months.

The HSA ranks this highly because contributions made through a qualifying payroll arrangement can reduce federal taxable income and avoid Social Security and Medicare taxes. The calculator does not assign that payroll-tax benefit to 401(k) or IRA contributions. IRS Publication 15

How you contribute matters. A direct HSA contribution may still qualify for a federal income-tax deduction, but it does not recover payroll taxes already withheld. Refined FI accounts for this difference when comparing payroll and direct contributions.

The calculator also includes state treatment. It does not apply a state HSA deduction in California or New Jersey, where the state tax advantage is unavailable.

For 2026, the HSA contribution limit is $4,400 for self-only coverage and $8,750 for family coverage. An eligible account owner age 55 or older may contribute an additional $1,000. IRS 2026 HSA limits

Refined FI's Contribution Waterfall Calculator asks whether you are HSA-eligible, whether you have self-only or family coverage, and whether contributions can be made through payroll. It then places the HSA in your contribution sequence and estimates the federal, state, local, and payroll-tax savings.

Your next step: Confirm whether your employer allows HSA contributions through a qualifying payroll arrangement. That determines whether your contribution receives the payroll-tax advantage modeled by the calculator.

HSA eligibility generally requires qualifying high-deductible health plan coverage, no disqualifying additional coverage, and that you cannot be claimed as someone else's dependent. Medicare enrollment ends contribution eligibility, but turning 65 by itself does not. IRS Form 8889 instructions

The disqualifying coverage most people meet is a general-purpose health flexible spending account, which their employer offers on the same enrollment screen: see HSA vs FSA for how to choose between them. For what to do with the money once it is in there, see how to invest HSA funds . For why it can beat a Roth IRA even when eventually taxed, see HSA vs Roth IRA . For what changes once Medicare starts, see HSA After 65 .

The calculator relies on you to confirm eligibility. It does not determine eligibility from Medicare enrollment, dependent status, or month-by-month coverage, and it does not model partial-year contribution rules. Annual limits are educational estimates and change over time.

No. There is no provision in the tax code for moving money from an HSA into a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA, and it does not become available at any age. An HSA stays an HSA for life.

The one-time transfer runs into the HSA, never out of it. IRS Publication 969

Money withdrawn from an HSA and deposited into an IRA is not a rollover. It is a non-qualified HSA distribution: the full amount is ordinary income that year, plus a 20% penalty before age 65. After 65 the penalty no longer applies, but the income tax does, and those dollars permanently lose the tax-free treatment for qualified medical expenses.

The confusion has a real source. After 65 an HSA works like a traditional IRA for non-medical withdrawals, which is accurate. Working like an account is not becoming one. The tax-free medical lane exists only inside an HSA, and reimbursements for past out-of-pocket expenses can only be paid from one. For the full timeline of what changes at 65, see HSA After 65 .

Your next step: Keep your HSA open as its own account for life, even after contributions end at Medicare enrollment. There are no required minimum distributions on an HSA, so leaving it invested costs nothing.

Refined FI's [[Withdrawal Waterfall Calculator]] sequences which accounts to draw from in a given year, including an HSA. It does not move money and it does not open or close accounts. It estimates the order and the tax effect under the current year's rules.

Roll it. That is the default for a plan you left behind, and only three things change the answer.

Your old plan hands you the menu its committee picked. The stock options are usually a total market index and an S&P 500 fund that own nearly the same companies, so you get concentration risk twice over. The bond fund is usually a total bond market index, which lends most heavily to whoever issues the most debt rather than to whoever is most creditworthy. And there is no way to act on market risk inside it. An IRA opens the whole market instead. For what to hold once it is there, see what your 401(k) should actually hold .

Price your current menu before you decide. The 401(k) allocation calculator takes your actual mix and returns the cost in years and months rather than percentages.

None of those three sneak up on you. If none apply, roll it.

The move itself costs nothing in tax. A direct rollover is not a distribution, nothing is added to your income for the year, and the money keeps its pre-tax treatment until you withdraw it in retirement. IRS: Rollovers of retirement plan and IRA distributions

Then finish it. The money arrives as cash and sits there until you buy something, and that is where it slips through the cracks. Transfers move fast, so set two reminders to check, and allocate it the day it lands.

Your next step: Check two things today: whether you hold company stock in that plan, and whether a Backdoor Roth is part of your retirement plan. If neither, call your broker and ask for a custodian-to-custodian transfer.

This is educational, not tax advice. After-tax money inside the plan, company stock, and an outstanding plan loan each follow their own rules, and every plan sets its own terms.

Reduce risk when a rule established before the market decline says conditions have changed, not simply because prices are falling. That rule has to exist in advance and it has to have been tested. This is the ordinary method used in any other field: you form a hypothesis about what conditions tend to show up before serious market damage, then you test it against history to see whether it held. A rule that has never been tested is a hunch, and hunches feel strongest at exactly the wrong moment.

The final question is essential. A rule that tells you when to leave but not when to return can strand you in cash after the market recovers.

Most people cannot answer all four, and that is not a failure of intelligence. Answering them means watching the market every day, holding the rule when holding it feels wrong, and knowing the same rule will tell you when to come back. That is a job. You already have one.

Did you or your advisor do anything to protect your portfolio in 2022?

The Refined FI Risk Monitor checks multiple market-risk inputs daily and combines them into one of four instructions: Stay the Course, two levels of Reduce Risk, or Add Risk. Most days require no change.

When guidance calls for a portfolio action, you receive an email. Your dashboard shows the current guidance and names the allocation to move to, and every Refined FI portfolio is monitored daily. When conditions improve, the guidance tells you to move back toward growth or return to your default allocation.

This removes the need to monitor markets, interpret individual charts, or decide under pressure whether the latest decline is different. Your decision rule exists before fear enters the room.

Your next step: Write down both parts of your current rule: what would make you reduce risk, and what would make you add it back. If you cannot finish both sentences, you do not yet have a complete process. Then run the Portfolio Stress Test to see what a severe historical decline could cost your current plan.

The Risk Monitor will not identify every market top, prevent every loss, or trade your accounts. It can reduce risk before a decline that never arrives, which may mean missing some upside. Diversification and allocation changes can reduce risk, but they cannot guarantee against losses.

Educational only, not investment advice. Historical indicators and returns do not predict future results.

For retirement planning, measure risk in two ways: the current market environment and the damage a bad market sequence could do to your portfolio. Refined FI's Risk Monitor measures the first. The Portfolio Stress Test measures the second.

No single indicator determines the answer. The Risk Monitor checks them daily and combines the evidence into one Current Guidance instruction, so you are not left deciding which indicator matters most when they disagree.

The macro, inflation, and yield-curve pages use data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, including CPI , corporate profits , and the 10-year minus 3-month Treasury spread .

Your portfolio risk requires a different measurement. Volatility describes how widely returns have moved, but it does not tell you whether a bad sequence would exhaust the money funding your retirement.

Refined FI's Portfolio Stress Test runs your starting balance, allocation, and withdrawals through historical returns for stocks, bonds, cash, and gold. Enter only the spending that must come from the portfolio after Social Security and pension income.

Your next step: Check Current Guidance to understand today's market-risk environment. Then run the Portfolio Stress Test to see what a severe historical sequence would do to your own balance and retirement withdrawals.

The Stress Test measures historical outcomes, not the probability of a future loss. It does not calculate beta, value at risk, or recovery time. Future market conditions can be worse than the historical periods tested.

Educational only, not investment advice. Historical indicators and returns do not predict future results.

No. A 60/40 portfolio can still reduce risk and produce income, but the 40% bond allocation does not guarantee protection when stocks fall. Its protection weakens when inflation causes stocks and bonds to move together.

The negative stock-bond relationship many investors became accustomed to was not permanent. AQR noted in April 2026 that stock-bond correlation was more often positive than negative from 1900 through 2000, even though it was usually negative from 2000 through 2020. AQR also warned that positive correlation does not mean investors should abandon bonds and replace them with more equity risk. Source: AQR .

The International Monetary Fund reported in February 2026 that bonds had become less effective at cushioning sharp stock-market selloffs over the preceding few years, with inflation shocks contributing to the change. Source: International Monetary Fund .

This is why Refined FI does not automatically treat a broad bond index as the safe part of a 401(k). See what your 401(k) should actually hold for the role of stable value and other defensive options.

Your next step: Pull up your 2022 year-end statement and compare what your stock and bond funds did. Then run your current allocation through the Portfolio Stress Test to see how the full mix performed during historical periods when both sides struggled.

Correlation describes a tendency over a period, not a rule for every day or year. Bonds still produce interest income, and none of this is a reason by itself to sell them.

Educational only, not investment advice. Historical indicators and returns do not predict future results.

Inflation hurts a retirement portfolio in three ways: it raises the amount you must withdraw to maintain your lifestyle, it can reduce bond prices, and it can cause stocks and bonds to fall together.

Stocks have long-term growth potential, but that does not make them a reliable short-term inflation hedge. Federal Reserve research has found that positive inflation surprises can coincide with negative stock returns. That short-term vulnerability matters most near or during retirement, when you may be selling investments while prices are falling. Source: Federal Reserve .

This makes inflation a sequence-of-returns problem as well as a purchasing-power problem. Your withdrawals rise while the assets funding them may be losing value.

An inflation field is not automatically a flaw. The problem is a calculator that asks you to enter inflation without explaining whether its returns are nominal or real and whether its results are future dollars or today's dollars. Without consistent units, the result is impossible to interpret.

Refined FI's Retirement Number Calculator and Portfolio Longevity Calculator avoid that mismatch by using real, after-inflation returns and showing results in today's dollars. You do not enter a separate inflation rate.

The Portfolio Stress Test handles inflation differently. It uses nominal historical returns and, when inflation indexing is enabled, increases your withdrawals using the actual CPI recorded in each historical year. You do not have to guess a future inflation rate.

Your next step: Check whether your retirement projection uses nominal or real returns and whether its results are shown in future dollars or today's dollars. Then run the Portfolio Stress Test with inflation-indexed withdrawals turned on, using only the spending your portfolio must cover after Social Security and pension income.

No allocation eliminates inflation risk. The Stress Test applies historical inflation, not a forecast, and future relationships between inflation, interest rates, stocks, and bonds may be different.

Educational only, not investment advice. Historical indicators and returns do not predict future results.