Version 3.0

Name your one-off expenses New

Extra Withdrawals used to be three separate boxes called "Extra Withdrawal 1, 2 and 3". They are now one box holding up to six withdrawals that you can name, so a big trip and replacing the car are told apart on every chart instead of both reading as a number.

• Give each one a name, like "Trip to Japan". The name is used in the charts and the Table.
• Add and remove withdrawals inside the one box.
• Start and end age sit on a single line, and one Amount box switches between yearly and monthly.
• Repeating costs: choose a single payment in a month and set it to repeat every few years, so "a new car every 7 years" is one entry instead of five.

Your existing entries move across automatically and your projection does not change. This is for a handful of big one-offs; for everyday spending use the Monthly Budget.

Social Security: enter one number New

The Social Security box used to ask for the same thing twice: a starting age and an amount at the top, then a full retirement age and a benefit at FRA lower down. Now you enter one number, your monthly benefit at Full Retirement Age, and everything else is worked out for you.

• Your Full Retirement Age is calculated from your birth year, so there is nothing to look up.
• Choosing when to start collecting updates the amount immediately, and shows what waiting or claiming early is worth.
• "Compare all claiming ages" lays out ages 62 to 70 side by side; pick one and the plan follows.
• If your statement only shows an estimate for a different age, use "I only have an estimate for a different age" and we will work back to your FRA amount.

Worth checking: previously the amount did not change when you moved the starting age, so some plans hold an amount that does not match their claiming age. Open the box once and confirm the benefit at FRA is what your statement says. If you had adjusted the claiming age before, your projection may change the first time you touch the box.

Your plan at a glance New

The Summary tab pulls your whole plan together on one page: a plain-language view of where your plan stands, your net-worth progress over time, how you compare with the community, and shortcuts into the rest of the app.

Find your way back New

When you follow a link or button to another page, a slim bar now shows where you came from, for example ← Coach › Optimizer. Click it to return to exactly where you were: the same Coach suggestion selected, the same place on the page. It works from the Summary cards, the Coach, Your Taxes, the Learning Library, the planners, and the buttons on charts and boxes. Clicking the tabs or the side menu works as it always did and shows no bar.

The Coach New

The Coach reviews your actual plan and makes specific, prioritized suggestions, each with a one-click path to act on it. It looks at things like Social Security claiming ages for you and your spouse, spending guardrails, filing-status mismatches, plan headroom, account references that point at deleted accounts, mortgage-payoff scenarios worth testing, and whether your plan has a backup plan.

The Learning Library New

Short, practical guides that use your own plan's real numbers instead of generic examples, so every chart and figure in an article is about you:

• How Taxes Work in Retirement, with an interactive tax-bracket explorer
• Required Minimum Distributions
• When to Claim Social Security
• How Contributions Work
• The Retirement Spending Smile
• Spending Guardrails
• IRMAA and Medicare Surcharges
• What Return Should You Assume?
• How Do You Stack Up?
• Community Plans

A verdict up top, and clearer cards Improved

The Summary now opens with a plain-language verdict of where your plan stands, written from your actual numbers and backed by specific evidence ("in all 106 historical scenarios we tested..."). The Cash Flow card breaks retirement income into guaranteed sources versus withdrawals, every card says whether it comes from your main projection or from Chance of Success, and a Keep Learning row suggests three articles picked for your plan. "How Do You Stack Up" gains a plain-English conclusion, a smarter comparison slider, a "what we counted" breakdown, and a look at where your wealth is headed.

Name the moments that matter New

Create up to five Milestones: at an age ("Downsize at 70") or when a financial condition is first met ("portfolio reaches $2 million", "net worth reaches 25 times spending"). Conditions are watched from today onward, working years included, with dollar thresholds in today's dollars. Milestones appear as flag markers on your charts, and Chance of Success reports how often each one is reached across all futures, and at what age.

Milestones that change your plan Planner+

Attach an action to a milestone and the projection applies it when the milestone fires: start part-time income, cut spending, receive a one-time cash infusion, or add an expense. A Budget expense can also start when a condition milestone happens ("When FIRE happens"), so milestone-driven spending lives right in your budget with its own category and name. Defining milestones and seeing them on your charts is free for everyone; attaching plan-changing actions and milestone-timed budget expenses is a Planner+ feature.

Timing that follows your plan Improved

Part-Time Income, Extra Withdrawals, and One-Time Benefit timing can now be anchored to retirement (yours or your spouse's, with an offset like "2 years after") instead of a fixed age, so they move automatically when your retirement age changes. Budget expenses can anchor too: an expense can start or end when one of your Milestones happens ("Downsize at 70"), and its timing follows the milestone if you later change it.

Cash that builds up in retirement can be invested NewCan change your numbers

In retirement, income you do not spend (Social Security or a pension above your spending, rent, a minimum distribution larger than you needed) lands in cash. A new "Cash that builds up in retirement" card on the Withdrawal Planner's Cash step lets it move into a brokerage account instead: each month, the new cash that arrived above your Minimum Balances is invested in the account you pick, either spouse's. The cash you carry into retirement and the safety net itself are never moved, so "Hold cash in reserve" and "Custom amounts per year" keep the cash they count on. It works in Simple and Advanced mode, the Spending box shows "excess to" your chosen account, and the "?" explains the details. Try it with an early Social Security claim to see what investing the checks is worth. Off by default.

Working-year income counts all of your income ImprovedCan change your numbers

"Left over after expenses" and working-year shortfall funding used to look only at salaries. Rent from a rental property, Other Income, Retirement Income side work, deferred compensation, and a pension or Social Security already being paid while you work now count too, taxed with their own rules. A household with $100,000 of pay, $20,000 of rent and $100,000 of expenses saves what the rent leaves after tax instead of $0, and no longer draws from its accounts to cover a gap the rent already covers. The breakdown card in Retirement Contributions shows salary and other income as separate rows. Changes numbers only for plans with this kind of income during working years.

More milestones appear on your charts automatically Improved

Charts already badge retirement, Social Security, pension, and income starts. They now also mark each person's own Medicare start at 65 and RMD start by birth year (couples with an age gap get two of each), penalty-free withdrawals at 59½, OAS eligibility and RRIF minimums for Canadian plans, the month your mortgage is paid off, marketplace health coverage starting, and clear warnings when savings or an HSA run out. The Milestones box lists every automatic milestone alongside the ones you create.

Simple or Advanced, your choice New

The Withdrawal Strategy section of Retirement Spending now has a Simple and Advanced switch. Simple is the default and is exactly what your plan does today: pick a withdrawal strategy, choose whether to apply RMDs, and the plan spends available cash first and splits the rest by that strategy. Advanced opens the Withdrawal Planner below, where you decide how your cash is used, set your own percentages across account types, and fine-tune the order of accounts. You can switch back to Simple at any time; your Advanced settings are kept and come back when you switch again. Every existing plan opens in Simple and its numbers are unchanged.

A spouse's accounts, and money that would be penalized, are now protected NewCan change your numbers

Until now, withdrawals were split across every account in a bucket by balance, whoever owned it. A 57-year-old retiree with a 50-year-old spouse who was still working saw her IRA and Roth drained alongside his, with the 10% early-withdrawal penalty on every dollar of hers. Plans now spend accessible money first: cash, taxable accounts, Roth contributions, and the retired person's penalty-free accounts. Retirement accounts that would carry the penalty, or that belong to someone who has not retired yet, are used only when nothing else can cover the month, and required minimums are always taken. This is on for every US and Canadian plan, in Simple and Advanced; UK plans keep the previous behaviour for now. Taxable accounts and cash are always available, whoever owns them, so a working spouse's brokerage pays alongside the retiree's from day one. Plans with an early retiree or a working spouse will show different withdrawals and lower penalties. Leaving an employer at 55 or later? Tick Rule of 55 applies on that 401(k) or 403(b) in Accounts and the plan uses it before 59½ with no penalty.

See early-withdrawal penalties where they happen New

The penalty was priced correctly but easy to miss. The Withdrawals chart now marks the part of a withdrawal that goes to the 10% penalty as its own red band, and the tooltip names whose penalty it is. The Retirement Plan Analysis explains any penalty in that person's own ages (a spouse's window used to be shown in the primary's ages) and its button goes straight to the Withdrawal Planner. The penalty itself is now priced on where the money actually comes from, so a spouse whose accounts are untouched is charged nothing.

Roth conversions follow the same protection New Can change your numbers

If one of you is past 59½ and the other is not, a Roth conversion now comes from the 59½+ person's pre-tax account first, so the tax withheld from it is not an early distribution. Before, the conversion was split across both of your pre-tax balances and the younger person's share carried the 10% penalty every conversion year. Couples who are both on the same side of 59½, and anyone converting on their own, are unchanged.

One home for where money comes from New

Your withdrawal strategy, the order of accounts within each bucket, and the new cash controls all live on the Withdrawal Planner, with the Retirement Spending box showing a one-line summary and a button to the page. It also answers the most common question we get: "why is my withdrawal strategy being ignored?" It never was; cash was simply funding the month first, and now you can see that, and change it.

Choose how your cash is used New

Three options on the Cash card: spend available cash first (the default, same as before), hold cash in reserve so your investment strategy funds spending from day one, or set custom amounts per year on a draggable graph, for example $20,000 per year until 65 and nothing after (Planner+). Amounts are in today's dollars, and a dashed line shows how much your plan actually needs beyond guaranteed income each year. Each cash account's Minimum Balance is protected in every mode, and a new checkbox lets that safety net grow with inflation.

Custom Mix NewPlanner+

Set your own withdrawal percentages across Taxable, Pre-Tax, and Tax-Free with three self-balancing sliders, applied to every withdrawal. If a bucket runs out, its share is divided across the remaining buckets. As far as we know, no other planner lets you set your own withdrawal percentages at all.

Find the Best Mix New

A button on the Custom Mix section tests your plan, exactly as configured, against a few dozen percentage splits and suggests the strongest one it finds, with one-click apply. The Optimizer runs the same search at the end of every Quick Scan and Thorough Search and includes a winning mix on the winner card when it genuinely helps. The search is honest about noise: if the tested mixes are all within reach of what you have, it stays quiet. The Presets pane has the same idea: Find the Best Option tests all seven presets and shows, under each one, how your plan ends, with the best highlighted.

Reinvest RMDs you don't spend New

When required minimum distributions exceed your spending, the leftover cash can now be reinvested into your taxable account automatically instead of accumulating as cash. Find it on the Withdrawal Planner under Apply RMDs, with a report showing exactly what gets reinvested each year. Off by default; your numbers change only if you turn it on.

Cash safety nets are now fully respected FixedCan change your numbers

One-time withdrawals, college expenses, and annuity purchases no longer dip below a cash account's Minimum Balance while you still have investments; the money comes from investment accounts instead, and if it cannot, the event is partially funded and flagged rather than raiding the reserve. Affected plans were quietly spending protected cash; results now match the promise the Minimum Balance field makes.

A 0% bucket is now a true last resort FixedCan change your numbers

In a Custom Mix, a bucket set to 0% is left alone while any weighted bucket has money, same as before. But previously, if every weighted bucket ran dry, the plan stopped funding spending even with money sitting in a 0% bucket, which read as a failure that was not real. The plan now draws on 0% buckets once everything else is empty. Also fixed: in Monthly Expenses mode, when an account type runs out mid-month, the gap now comes from the next type in your chosen order (it previously always came from Tax-Free first).

Choose where bracket-filling withdrawals land New

If you use "extra withdrawals" to top off a low tax bracket (Optimize, under Roth Conversions and Bracket Filling), those proceeds always sat in cash at your cash rate. You can now send them to your brokerage account instead, where they go back in the market at your portfolio rate with dividends, interest, and eventual gains taxed normally. The choice appears once your plan has a brokerage account, and your cash minimum balances are respected either way. After an Optimizer run, a note tells you what switching the destination would be worth for the winning strategy, with a one-click switch. On a Monthly Expenses plan cash stays the default, so plans that do not opt in are unchanged. On a plan that spends by Monthly Income or the 4% Rule, these withdrawals now happen too (they used to be planned and never made), and since they are not needed for spending, their after-tax dollars are invested in your brokerage account rather than piling up in cash.

Extra Withdrawals can name the account, and say where the money goes New

A one-off withdrawal can now come from one specific account of yours or your spouse's, rather than whichever accounts your withdrawal order reaches first. That account is drawn first, and anything it cannot cover follows your normal order, with the box showing you the split ("This account covers $18,000 of $25,000; the rest follows your withdrawal order").

You can also choose where the money goes. "Spend it" is the withdrawal you already had. "Keep it as cash" and "Move it to" a brokerage account are transfers: the money leaves the source account and lands in the destination the following month, so it changes where your money sits rather than what you spend. Use it to build a cash runway before you retire, move IRA money to brokerage in a low-income year, or model a CD maturing into your brokerage account. Cash accounts are drawn as one pool, so they cannot be named individually.

Extra withdrawals are taxed in the month they happen Fixed Can change your numbers

An extra withdrawal is now taxed exactly like any other withdrawal from the same kind of account: a pre-tax draw is ordinary income and carries the 10% early-withdrawal penalty if the owner is under 59½, a Roth draw follows the Roth rules, and a draw from a taxable account realizes gains. Transfers count too, so moving money from an IRA to a brokerage account is a taxable event in your plan, just as it is in real life. Previously these withdrawals were not taxed at all.

Plans with a pre-tax or taxable extra withdrawal, or a college payment drawn from savings, will show higher taxes than before, and the penalty if it applies. Those numbers were understated; these are the correct ones. If a withdrawal would be penalized, the box now warns you before you leave the page and tells you what it costs.

Roth conversions happen in the year you turn that age FixedCan change your numbers

A Roth conversion is a calendar-year event: the plan converts once a year, in January, and the amount is taxed in that year's return. The Start Age and End Age in the Roth Conversions box now mean the calendar years in which you turn those ages, the way the IRS treats every age-based rule, and the box shows the years beneath the sliders ("Converts each January from 2027 to 2031, the years you turn 58 to 62"). Before, the plan tested your age at the start of each year, so anyone whose birthday is not in January converted one year later than they asked: a July birthday and "age 58" converted in the year they turned 59. January birthdays are unchanged; everyone else's conversions move one year earlier. The Optimizer's window labels show the same years. Conversions still begin with the plan's first full calendar year, and the box says so when a year is skipped. The Start Age slider now begins at the first age that can still convert, so you cannot pick a year whose January has already passed, and the Optimizer's window label and its Conversion years count only the years that convert. The Roth Conversions chart shows one bar per conversion year in either view, captioned by the year or by the age you turn that year, so a bar never holds part of a conversion.

Pay Roth conversion taxes from cash New

Until now the tax on a Roth conversion was always withheld from the converted amount, so a $100,000 conversion at 22% put about $78,000 into the Roth. You can now choose to pay the tax from your cash account instead and move the full amount. Find the choice under Tax Considerations in the Roth Conversions box, or on the Optimizer's Roth Conversions and Bracket Filling page. The plan takes the tax out of cash in the conversion year without dipping below your cash minimum balance; anything cash cannot cover is paid the way the rest of your taxes are, and the conversion amount is never reduced. Off by default; existing plans keep withholding and are unchanged. Built from a user request. Two companions: with Cash selected, the page shows a coverage note saying whether your cash covered the full tax in every conversion year, only some years, or none; and the Optimizer's search ends by trying the other payment choice on its winner, and offers it in one click when it comes out ahead.

Your HSA is used as a last resort, even without the HSA box FixedCan change your numbers

After 65 the plan can draw on an HSA for any spending once every other account is gone. That safety net was documented as on by default, but it only switched on when you had added the HSA box to the Dashboard. A plan with an HSA account on the Accounts tab and no HSA box left the HSA untouched while everything else ran out, and the Key Metrics card still read "Depletion: Never" because the HSA balance was counted as portfolio. Both are fixed: the safety net is on unless you turn it off in the HSA box, and Depletion now reports the age the plan could no longer fund spending. Built from a user report.

Annuities you already own no longer get "bought" again Fixed

The Annuity box used to start every annuity as a purchase, with a default premium at a default purchase age. For anyone already past that age the plan bought the annuity in its first month, took the premium from their accounts and, when it came from a pre-tax account, taxed the whole premium as income that year: a retiree entering income he already receives watched his portfolio collapse. Now the box first asks where the annuity is today: one you plan to buy, one that already pays you, or a deferred contract that is still growing. A new box starts on "I already receive payments" when you are at or past the purchase age, and if a purchase would fire in the first month the box says so plainly, with the amount and the tax consequence, and points to that choice. Built from a user report.

Compare retirement ages and spending amounts New

A new link under the spending slider opens a grid: for your retirement age and the ages around it, the highest monthly spending your plan sustains at each one, computed live from your actual plan. Each row has a Use this button that applies the retirement age and spending together, so "what if I worked one more year?" is one click instead of a slider hunt.

Compare your saved plans side by side NewPlanner+

My Plans and Budgets has a new Compare Plans tab. Tick up to three plans, including the one you are working on right now, and you get a scoreboard of the numbers that matter with the difference against the first plan, plus an overlay chart you can switch between net worth, portfolio, withdrawals and taxes, in today's or future dollars. Each plan's linked budget is rebuilt for that comparison, so a plan with its own budget is judged on its own spending.

Two things worth knowing. Every plan in the comparison runs on today's account balances, so you are comparing the strategies rather than the balances each plan happened to be saved with, and the page says so. Chance of Success is not part of the comparison: it is a separate historical-sequences calculation, so plans are compared on the main projection only.

Rename a plan or a budget New

Names were fixed once you created them, so a plan you called "test 2" stayed "test 2". On My Plans and Budgets, every saved plan and every budget now has a pencil beside Duplicate and Delete. Click it and the name becomes a box in the row: type, press Enter to save or Esc to change your mind. Names have to be different from your other plans, and the page tells you in place if one is already taken.

Nothing else about the plan changes. Your settings, your notes and your share links keep working, so anyone holding a link sees the same plan under its new name. If the plan or budget you rename is the one you have open, it carries on saving to the same place.

Smarter withdrawal-rate feedback Improved

The first-year withdrawal rate readout now judges your rate against your actual retirement length, not a one-size 30-year rule. A 5.1% rate at a retirement age of 78 reads as sustainable; the same rate at 55 gets flagged. The same horizon-aware judgment flows through the wellness metrics.

Which calculation said that? Improved

Key Metrics now says it comes from your main projection, the Chance of Success box explains its separate historical-sequences calculation (with a link to the full page), and help popups on both spell out why the two can disagree. A "Spending Smile on" pill on the Portfolio chart shows when the smile is shaping your spending, and the Withdrawals chart gains an Open Withdrawal Planner button.

The All Accounts chart New

Every investment account is its own band, by name, so you can watch each 401(k), IRA, and brokerage account grow and drain across the whole plan. The Charts & Data table gains matching Accounts and Contributions views with per-account columns that always reconcile with the totals, and the Withdrawals chart gains a Per Account toggle plus its own band for required minimum distributions.

Withdrawal Order NewPlanner+

Decide which accounts fund your spending first. Your withdrawal strategy still chooses the tax bucket each month; within a bucket, the first account on your list drains to zero, then the second. Want an old 403(b) emptied before your main IRA, or your spouse's IRA used first? Set the order on the Withdrawal Planner and watch it play out.

• This is about control and clarity, not tax savings: accounts inside a bucket share the same tax treatment, so your taxes stay essentially the same whichever order you pick.
• Buckets you leave untouched keep the default behavior, withdrawing in proportion to balances.
• Inherited IRAs, HSAs, and cash follow their own rules. Not yet available for UK plans.

Asset Location NewPlanner+

Keep bonds in your pre-tax accounts and stocks in your Roth, the classic strategy, and the projection finally reflects it: set a custom stocks/bonds split per account type in the Portfolio Returns box. It changes how each pool grows; it never moves money between pools. Your splits apply in Manual projections and in Chance of Success, which re-blends the same historical return sequences with your weights.

Per-Account Growth NewPlanner+

Give any single account its own growth: a custom stocks/bonds mix, a fixed rate for a stable value fund or CD, or no growth at all. This shapes your Manual projection. A fixed rate or a no-growth setting never reaches Chance of Success, which always stress-tests against historical market returns, so a hand-picked rate can never inflate your success rate. A custom stocks/bonds mix does carry through (see the Allocation Planner section). We never silently rebalance between accounts; if they drift apart, that is real behavior, and now you can see it. UK accounts inherit plan growth for now.

More account-level control Improved

One-Time Benefits (inheritances, windfalls) can now be deposited into a specific account of your choosing, and annuity purchases gain a "Pay for Purchase From" picker.

Interest and dividends, modeled automatically NewCan change your numbers

Taxable brokerage accounts now generate taxable interest and dividends each year, derived from their balances and stock/bond mix (about 1.5% dividends on the stock portion, your fixed return on bonds), with per-account yields settable in each account's Edit dialog and a Qualified Share control for the tax treatment. This is a tax-accuracy change, not extra return: it characterizes part of the growth you already assume as taxable income, treated as reinvested. Prefer exact numbers? Switch to "Enter annual amounts" in the Taxes box and type the dollars from your 1099s. If your plan already had amounts typed there, it now uses the automatic figures instead; the Taxes box shows a one-time note with a one-click way back to your typed amounts. Plans holding taxable money will see somewhat higher, more realistic taxes.

Cost basis New

Enter a taxable account's cost basis and the projection tracks it forward through every withdrawal, deposit, and year of growth, so capital gains reflect your real basis instead of a flat assumption. An explicit $0 basis (fully appreciated holdings) works. Accounts without a basis entered keep the Taxable Gains percentage as before.

Roth contributions and the early-withdrawal penalty NewCan change your numbers

Withdrawals before age 59½ from pre-tax accounts now carry the 10% IRS penalty by default, because that is standard law. Roth accounts gain a "Past contributions" field, and pre-59½ Roth withdrawals draw those contributions penalty-free first, exactly as the IRS allows. Planning around an exception we don't model, like a 72(t) schedule or the Rule of 55? The penalty has an off switch in Advanced tax settings. Plans that retire before 59½ will see the penalty they would really pay.

Annual investment fee New

A new fee percentage in Portfolio Returns shaves your advisory or fund fee off returns everywhere: manual projections, Chance of Success, and every account. The Combined Return readout shows the net figure.

Account availability New

Mark any account "never withdraw" or "not before age N" (a 457(b) you're saving, an account earmarked for heirs) and the projection funds spending around it, warning you honestly if that creates a shortfall instead of quietly unlocking the money.

One page for your whole mix New

The Allocation Planner walks through three numbered steps: your plan-wide mix (fixed, or a glide path that shifts with age), optional per-bucket mixes, and per-account exceptions. A live Portfolio Impact card shows how your changes move the projection against a ghost of where it stood when you opened the page. The Portfolio Returns box stays simple by default (two sliders); an Advanced toggle opens the planner.

Glide paths per bucket NewPlanner+

Each tax bucket can now follow its own age-based allocation curve, drawn on a draggable graph, instead of one number forever. Curves apply in Chance of Success too.

Custom account mixes now count in Chance of Success Can change your numbers

An account with its own custom stocks/bonds mix now keeps that mix inside Chance of Success, which re-blends the same historical sequences with your weights. Accounts with a fixed rate or no growth remain deliberately excluded there, so a hand-picked rate can never inflate a success score. Plans using custom account mixes will see their Chance of Success shift to the more honest number.

Simple or Advanced contributions, your choice New

The Retirement Contributions box has a Simple | Advanced switch. Simple is the default and what every existing plan uses: the familiar setup right in the box, with a yearly amount and yearly increase for each person, your allocation across buckets or custom amounts per account, and the Lump Sum in January option. With a spouse included, a toggle switches the box between the two of you.

Advanced opens the Contribution Planner, where the household plans on one page: fund savings from a percentage of salary or from what is left after expenses, fill accounts to their limits in the order you choose, and set amounts that change year by year. Switch back to Simple whenever you like; your Advanced settings are kept and return when you switch again. Opening Advanced on an evenly split plan converts it into per-account amounts that reproduce the same split, so the planner simply works with nothing to click first.

One honest difference between the two: Simple invests the amounts exactly as you enter them, showing the limits as information only, while Advanced enforces them. That is why your plan does not change when you first open V3.

How much do I need to save? New

The question every calculator gets asked, answered from your own plan. A popup, opened from a one-line strip on the Contribution Planner or from the Retirement Contributions box, re-runs your projection with more savings and finds the smallest monthly amount that carries the plan to its end, with a cushion of one or two years of spending if you want one. Try a different retirement age without changing your plan, press Use to write the amount into your contributions, or compare retirement ages in one table: the first age marked "enough already" is how soon today's savings get you there. If you are already on track it tells you how much less would still work. The Retirement Contributions box carries the latest answer, and the Summary adds it to a plan that runs out of money. Free, and it works in Simple mode.

Your 2026 contribution limits, one click away New

A personalized limits popup, opened from the Retirement Contributions help, from the over-limit warning, and from the planner's "Where it goes" heading. It states your own workplace employee limit for your age with the catch-up named (catch-ups are applied automatically, there is nothing to enter), the overall limit that employer money and after-tax contributions share, the new rule that higher earners' catch-ups must be Roth, and what this plan does with an amount over a limit in your funding mode. "See all 2026 limits" shows the full table, including the SIMPLE and SEP rules and what a mega backdoor Roth is. Every figure is read from the same table the projection uses, and future years are marked as estimates.

The over-limit warning now says how far over you are, that the catch-up is already included, and where the extra goes. The Employment Income box (the box formerly named Working Years Income) shows what the plan saves from that pay with a link to the contributions, and the Retirement Contributions box names the salary a percentage is taken from.

Limits are counted by calendar year, at the age you reach that year Changes numbers

Contribution limits are annual, per calendar year, and the catch-up belongs to the whole calendar year in which you turn 50 (and the larger 60 to 63 catch-up ends with the year you turn 64). The projection used to judge a limit once per plan year at the age you were at its start, so someone turning 50 in November lost the catch-up for most of a year they qualified in, and a plan year that straddled January could not tell September's dollars from the next year's. Room is now tracked month by month per calendar year, so those plans deposit what the law allows. Plans that were never near a limit do not change.

Employer contributions set as a percentage of pay, and now employer matches too, fit under the overall plan limit the way the rules count it: the limit is the lesser of the dollar figure and your pay, your own regular deferral is reserved first, and only catch-up dollars you actually contribute sit above it (the projection used to add your whole catch-up allowance to the employer room whether or not you used it). With Employment Income on, a 401(k) or similar deferral needs pay in the month, so it stops when the salary stops and the money goes to your taxable savings instead, and an IRA needs earned income somewhere in the household.

The Roth catch-up rule for higher earners New

From 2026, if your wages from the employer sponsoring your plan were above $150,000 the year before, the catch-up part of your workplace contribution has to be made as a Roth contribution; the regular deferral can still be pre-tax. The Employment Income box has a Roth catch-up rule setting for each person: calculate it automatically from your modelled wages (enter last year's wages for the first year), require it, say it does not apply, or say your plan has no Roth option. When it applies, the projection moves the catch-up dollars from your pre-tax account to the Roth 401(k) or 403(b) you choose and stops deducting them, so your working-year taxes and your Roth balance follow the rule. With no Roth workplace account yet, or a plan without a Roth option, the catch-up goes to taxable savings and a warning says so; it is never left pre-tax once the rule applies.

Plans saved before this release are left as they were, with a notice in Employment Income asking you to confirm the treatment; nothing changes until you choose. New plans calculate it automatically.

See what your contributions do New

The chart at the bottom of the Contribution Planner has two tabs now. Contributions is the year by year picture of what you are putting in. Portfolio shows what the plan is worth across its whole length, stacked by pre-tax, tax-free, taxable and cash, taken from your last calculation, and it names the age the money runs out if it does. Change a contribution above it and the chart redraws, so you can see what the change is worth without leaving the page.

The mega backdoor Roth New

Some workplace plans accept employee after-tax contributions above the regular deferral limit and let you convert them to Roth inside the plan or roll them to a Roth IRA. In Advanced mode, open a 401(k) or 403(b) row on the Contribution Planner and enter a Mega backdoor Roth contribution with the Roth account it lands in. The projection fits it under the $72,000 overall limit after your regular deferral and your employer's money, makes no deduction for it, and grows it tax-free from then on; anything above the room follows your fill order like any other capped amount. The card shows this year's room, and the limits popup explains the rule. Whether your plan allows it depends on its documents.

Switch it on with the toggle on the card and it gets its own year by year graph, below the one for the account itself. There is no amount to type: you drag each year exactly as you drag any other contribution, and the graph will not let you go above the room you actually have. The graph draws the room you actually have, which is the overall limit less your regular deferral and your employer's money, and will not let you drag above it. A year dragged to $0 stops the contribution from there, which covers the common case of being able to do this only while you are at one employer.

Two fixes from the review Fix

The "Above the 401(k) limit" warning could fire on an amount nothing on the page showed: it summed the stored per-account figures while every row read the planner's schedule, so a 401(k) dragged down to $300 on the graph still warned about the old figure. One shared reading now serves the warning, the planner rows and the box.

"How much do I need to save?" always answers with a number. It used to stop at what the household earned (or at a fixed figure when no salary was modelled) and say "no savings rate gets you there", quoting that figure as "all of your pay". Now the needed amount is found first, and whether the household can afford it is a separate line, shown only when the plan models pay.

One ordered list for the whole household New

With a spouse included, both people's accounts appear together. Drag any account to change what gets funded first, including putting your spouse's IRA above your own brokerage. Limits stay each person's own, and every row says whose room it is quoting.

Real contribution limits, in Advanced mode New

Switch the Contributions box to Advanced and 401(k), IRA, HSA and catch-up limits cap each account: money above a limit spills to the next account in your fill order instead of vanishing or being deposited illegally. Canadian plans get the CRA equivalents (see the Canada section). Per-account schedules let you set start and end ages, year windows, lump-sum or monthly timing, and "fill to the limit" rules. Simple mode, which is the default, does not apply the limits, so an existing plan keeps saving exactly what it saved before until you switch.

Three funding modes Improved

Fund savings with a set annual amount, a percent of salary, or "left over after expenses," which saves exactly what your take-home pay leaves after your working-year budget.

Couples no longer over-save in "Left over after expenses" FixedCan change your numbers

A spouse's own contribution was previously deposited on top of the household's leftover money rather than out of it. Affected couples will see lower, correct balances. Singles and the other funding modes are unaffected.

401(k) room now follows wages FixedCan change your numbers

When your plan models salaries, workplace-plan contributions are capped at that person's own pay; an account belonging to someone with no modelled salary shows $0 of room and says why. IRAs are deliberately exempt: a non-working spouse's IRA can be funded from the working spouse's pay, as the IRS allows.

Everything agrees now Fixed

The planner, the summary box, and the projection now always show the same household savings total (certain custom setups could show three different numbers). Cash works fully as a destination: a spouse's cash contribution actually deposits, and cash no longer double-counts on the Dashboard contributions chart.

Salary that changes over time New

Beside the classic fixed salary, an Adjust Over Time mode turns your salary into a per-year curve on a draggable chart, in today's dollars: steady raises, a planned step down to part-time before retirement, or a career break with a $0 year. Taxes, savings rates, employer match, and every chart follow the curve. This is now the recommended way to model phased retirement.

"Works until" anchors to your milestones New

Each person's salary ends at their own retirement milestone by default, so changing your retirement age moves the salary with it. You can instead anchor to any milestone with an offset ("1 year after Downsize"), to your spouse's retirement, or to a fixed age.

Employers that contribute a set percent of pay New

Not every employer matches. Safe-harbor plans, profit-sharing plans, and many university and government plans contribute a fixed share of your pay whether or not you save. The employer section of Employment Income now has a switch: Match (as before) or % of Pay, which adds that share of your salary to pre-tax savings every month. The plan stops the employer money once your own pre-tax deferral plus the employer's reaches the IRS overall limit for the year ($72,000 for 2026, plus your catch-up), the way real plans do. Anything above the limit is left out for now rather than counted as extra wages.

Pre-retirement shortfall funding New

If working-year expenses plus savings exceed take-home pay, the plan warns you, and can optionally fund the gap from your accounts, with early-withdrawal penalties modeled for US plans and pension access ages respected in the UK and Australia.

Charts & Data replaces the Table tab New

The old Table tab is retired. In its place, Charts & Data pairs every chart with its own matching data table on one page: pick a chart, see the numbers behind it, and export what you see. Everything the Table showed is still here, organized around the chart you're actually looking at.

Chance of Success trend graphs New

The trajectory table's sparklines are now outcome-colored area charts on a per-row scale, so you can actually see the shape of each candidate's future.

Cash Flow, redesigned Improved

The Dashboard Cash Flow controls are now an equation band: income minus taxes equals after-tax, against spending, with clear period navigation and CSV export.

Progress Points Improved

Formerly Snapshots, Progress Points are now recorded automatically once a day as you work on your plan, and both Summary net-worth graphs are interactive with hover detail.

New charts and readouts New

• A Taxable Income chart: wage income, capital gains, tax-deferred distributions, RMDs, and other taxable income stacked against your standard deduction, with taxable income as a line.
• The Income chart gains a Pre-Tax / After-Tax toggle, using the engine's per-source tax attribution.
• The Data Summary's Net Worth expands to per-account rows, plus a new Change in Net Worth section explaining each year's movement. Every chart tooltip now carries a Net Worth line.
• A first-year withdrawal rate readout under the spending slider.

Income that isn't a salary, pension, or annuity New

Two new Other Income slots (Add menu, Income) model disability compensation, alimony, trust distributions, royalties, or family support: a name, an owner, monthly or yearly amounts, a start age, an end age or "Continues for life", an optional yearly increase, and a tax treatment of fully taxable, tax-free, or partially taxable. The full payment arrives as spendable cash; only the taxable portion enters your taxes, in every supported country. It appears on the Income and Guaranteed Income charts, Charts & Data, the Summary cash-flow card, and the tax details.

An annuity's 0% taxable portion now works FixedCan change your numbers

Setting an annuity's Taxable Portion to 0% (a fully tax-free payment) was silently treated as 50% taxable. An explicit 0% now means zero, so affected plans see lower, correct taxes. Other values are unchanged, and the annuity box now explains why pre-tax-funded annuities are always fully taxable.

The Health Care box: marketplace premiums and subsidies New

Add the Health Care box (Add menu, Expenses) and turn on marketplace modeling: for each person's years between retirement and 65, the plan pays the ACA benchmark premium minus the premium tax credit your income earns, recomputed each year. The subsidy cliff, state Medicaid-expansion rules, and the per-person handoff to Medicare at 65 are all modeled. Enter your own healthcare.gov quote for accuracy or use the national age-based estimate, and a live readout shows what your plan actually pays. From 65, Medicare Part B and D premiums plus any IRMAA surcharge are charged automatically, as before. Your numbers change only if you turn marketplace modeling on.

Medicare starts at (September 2026): if someone stays on an employer plan past 65, their own or a working spouse's, set the age their Medicare actually starts on the Health Care box. Until then the plan charges that person no Part B or D premium and no IRMAA surcharge, and the chart badge moves to the age you set. Left at 65, nothing changes.

Pensions that rise by a fixed amount (September 2026): every pension box (Pension 1 and 2, the spouse pensions, Defined Benefit 1 and 2) now offers an increase mode. "% per year" is the compounding cost-of-living increase you had before. "$ per year" adds a fixed dollar amount every year, the same amount each time, for pensions that grow by a set sum rather than a percentage. Existing plans keep the percentage mode unchanged.

See the cost everywhere it matters Improved

Marketplace premiums appear as their own band on the Taxes chart and the Your Taxes page, as a gross/credit/net row in the Tax Calculation details, and on a redesigned Healthcare chart where the bars show what your household actually pays and the premium tax credit stands beside them as its own bar, so a subsidy never reads as an expense. The Budget page's Healthcare category now warns about double counting when marketplace modeling is on.

Learn: Health Insurance Before Medicare New

A new Learning Library article explains how the 2026 subsidy rules work, with an interactive explorer: set your household, state, and income, and watch what a year of coverage costs, cliff included. It starts from your own plan's ages, state, and estimated retirement income.

Medicare IRMAA, judged on the right income Improved

Medicare bases IRMAA surcharges on your income from two years earlier. The Pre-retirement MAGI field now covers every lookback year the projection cannot see, including working years when you are not modeling a salary, and the field only appears when it can actually affect your plan. Modeling your salary with Employment Income fills those years in automatically.

Enter your actual property tax ImprovedCan change your numbers

The home form now has both a Property Tax Rate and an Annual Property Tax dollar field: type the amount from your tax bill and the rate fills in, or vice versa. The tax grows with your home's value, shows up in Lifetime Taxes, and gets its own line in the year-by-year Tax Calculation details. Entering 0 now genuinely means zero. Existing homes keep the previous 1.2% estimate until you adjust it.

"Paid Off By" mortgage entry New

Type the maturity date straight from your mortgage statement and the years remaining and monthly payment fill in automatically; either field drives the other. The old "Loan Term" field is now labeled "Years Remaining", which is what the math always used.

Budget rows from your loans stay in sync ImprovedCan change your numbers

A loan payment added to your budget from the suggestion chips is now live-linked to the loan: the amount follows the loan (refinances flow through), the row ends at payoff instead of running to plan end, fixed payments no longer inflate, and deleting the loan removes the row. Click Unlink to take manual control. Previously chip-added rows were a stale one-time copy; they snap to the live loan on the next budget load, which for most affected plans lowers late-life spending and can raise the success rate. When you save a financed home, the app now also offers to add the payment to your budget in one click.

A smarter budget page Improved

Your monthly and annual totals now sit right at the top with a Needs/Wants/Splurge color bar. The Graphs and Forecast tabs share a Today's dollars / Future dollars toggle. The Forecast explains itself with a Changes column ("Mortgage payment ends", "Travel starts") and a retirement-year divider, and the spending chart gained event markers and click-to-inspect: click any age to see exactly where the money goes that year, largest first. Plus one-level undo after Clear all, always-visible row buttons, and category headers that show totals and remember what you collapsed.

A plan remembers its own budget Fixed

Switching plans could leave the prior plan's budget silently attached, and rapid edits could race the Use Budget selection back to "No" so the next run quietly ignored your budget. Each plan now keeps exactly its own budget pairing, and edits keep the selection.

Budget age ranges end at real birthdays FixedCan change your numbers

An expense entered for ages 70-75 could keep paying up to 11 months past 75, because ranges were mapped from the date you ran the plan rather than from birthdays. Ranges now start and end on real birthdays, matching the charts, and results no longer shift when the same plan is re-run in a different month. If you had entered end ages a year early to compensate, re-enter the true ages. Also fixed: rows with daily or yearly frequencies were shown in totals but skipped by the projection; they now count everywhere.

Every dollar tied to a source Improved

The By Income Source table now genuinely adds up on every plan: the Taxable column is fixed, other income and deferred compensation are attributed instead of vanishing, months funded from cash while a spouse still works are attributed (an engine fix that filled whole missing years on some plans), any small remainder appears as its own honest row, and a footer lists exactly what sits outside the table (payroll taxes, Medicare premiums, property tax, penalties) so it reconciles to the headline figure.

Lifetime figures now include property tax Can change your numbers

The Lifetime Taxes card, the Your Taxes hero, and the Dashboard Key Metrics now count every tax your plan pays, property tax included, and match the chart above them. The page says what is included, and the year detail shows a reconciliation strip: income taxes plus property tax equals all taxes this year.

Chart bars are birthday years Improved

The tax chart's yearly bars now cover the same birthday-to-birthday years as the tables, first and last partial years are labeled honestly (with annualized bracket figures marked as such), and the tax details popup gained rows explaining interest, dividends, and deferred compensation inside your AGI.

See your taxes by tax year New

The Your Taxes page groups every figure from one birthday to the next, like the rest of the app. A new By age / By tax year switch beside the dollars toggle regroups the page the way a return sees it: January to December (6 April to 5 April for UK plans), so the chart bars, the year detail with its bracket analysis, the reconciliation strip and the By Income Source table all describe one filing year. The first and last years cover only the months your plan runs, and say so. By age stays the default. Built from a user request.

Required minimum distributions are now per person Can change your numbers

Each spouse's RMDs now use their own age, own start year (73 or 75 in the US depending on birth year), and own accounts, instead of the household total at the primary person's age. Couples with an age gap typically see less forced taxable income in the early RMD years. One spouse's required distribution can no longer be satisfied from the other's accounts, matching the law. Singles and same-age couples are effectively unchanged. Also fixed: a narrow edge case where people born in late 1959 saw $0 RMDs at ages 73 to 74.

Multiple inherited IRAs each follow their own clock Can change your numbers

Each inherited account now runs its own 10-year window (or life-expectancy schedule), its own minimums, and its own start date, based on that account's original owner. Money from a more recently inherited account stays invested for its full allowed window instead of being forced out on an older account's schedule. Plans with one inherited IRA or fewer are unchanged.

TIPS ladders New

A new TIPS Ladder option under Income Sources models a ladder of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities you hold in a dedicated pre-tax account. On the Accounts page give the ladder its own account of type TIPS Ladder IRA, point the box at it, enter the yearly income in today's dollars, the first and last rung ages, and the ladder's average real yield. The plan sets that account aside, grows it at inflation plus the real yield in every projection (in Chance of Success it follows each historical inflation path), and pays each year's income across the year as a normal taxable withdrawal that counts toward required distributions, with anything above your spending banked to cash. A button sizes the income from the account balance, and the Coach warns if the account runs short. A new TIPS Ladder chart under More on the Dashboard shows each year's payout against your total withdrawals and the ladder account's value stepping down as rungs mature, and the Withdrawals chart carries a "From TIPS Ladder" band. Built from a Reddit thread and a coach's request.

Deferred and variable annuities you already own New

The Annuity box now asks where the annuity is today: one you plan to buy, one that already pays you, or a contract that is still growing. For a growing contract you enter its value, the premiums you paid in, and a growth rate, or say you plan to buy it and the plan pays the premium from your taxable accounts or cash at the purchase age; it grows tax-deferred with no required distributions, shows in your net worth, and starts paying at the age you choose. Annuitize it and the plan works out the tax-free share of each payment from your premiums using the IRS expected-return tables, or withdraw a set amount each year with gains taxed first, the early-withdrawal penalty before 59 1/2, and a warning if the contract runs out. A deferred annuity held inside an IRA stays a Traditional IRA account. Built from a user request.

Two lifespans: model a spouse living longer, or not as long NewCan change your numbers

Each of you now has your own Plan End age, and the plan runs to the later one. When the first of you passes, their salary, pensions, and other income stop; the survivor keeps the larger Social Security benefit as an estimate; pensions pay the survivor percentage you set; their accounts pass to the survivor; required distributions and Medicare follow the survivor; the survivor files as single from the next January; and spending can step down by a percentage you choose. Charts mark each person's longevity assumption, tooltips show who has passed, and the Coach notes the switch to single filing. Built from two user requests. Your numbers change only if you set a Plan End age for your spouse; plans without one are unchanged.

Life insurance policies NewCan change your numbers

The Life Insurance asset on the Accounts page is now a real policy: who is insured, term or permanent, the death benefit, the age coverage ends, the premium, and who owns it. The premium is charged as a household cost while the policy is in force. If the insured's Plan End age falls inside the plan, the benefit is paid income-tax-free to the survivor in that month, into household cash or a brokerage account you name. If the insured reaches the end of the plan, the benefit appears on the Estate tab as its own row, with no liquidation cost. A policy owned by an irrevocable trust is shown outside the taxable estate. Existing "Life Insurance Cash Value" entries keep working unchanged, except on the Estate tab, where they are no longer charged the liquidation cost that applies to cars and property. Not yet modeled: policy loans, cash-value withdrawals, second-to-die policies, and riders.

Annuity purchases can no longer spend money that does not exist Can change your numbers

A purchase is now limited to what your selected accounts actually hold; underfunded purchases buy a proportionally smaller annuity and show a funding warning. Fully funded plans are unchanged.

Financed rentals now subtract the mortgage payment from net rent Can change your numbers

Previously the payment was silently skipped for properties using the linked-mortgage setup, overstating rental income (one reported case: about $20,000 per year). Interest and principal are also now split correctly for tax purposes, since principal is not deductible.

Lifetime taxes for UK, Canadian, and Australian plans are lower, and correct Can change your numbers

Plans outside the US were being shown US Medicare premiums they were never actually charged, in some cases the majority of the displayed lifetime tax figure.

A 0% Taxable Gains setting is now honored Fixed

An explicit 0% (for a freshly funded brokerage or stepped-up basis) was previously taxed at the 30% default on several paths, and could silently reset to 30% when a plan was loaded.

Milestones can happen in a month New

An age-based milestone ("Downsize at 70") can now name the month it happens in: "In the month" beside the age in the Milestones editor, with the resolved date shown as you choose ("Happens March 2040"). Everything keyed to that milestone follows the month: its expense, income or spending-cut action, a Retirement Income, Extra Withdrawal, One-Time Benefit or Employment Income stop anchored to it, and budget rows that start or end with it. The Milestones box sentence, the chart badge, the Summary milestones card and the budget's milestone status chip all name the month. Milestones without a month keep happening on the birthday, unchanged. Condition-based milestones are still checked each January.

Budget rows can start and end in a month New

Budget expenses have always run in whole years of your age. Each row can now carry a start month and a last month paid beside its ages, or run "For a set time" (a number of months or years from its start), in the Edit Expense dialog and inline in the budget table, with the exact month, year and age shown as you choose. "At Retirement" and "Until Retirement" rows follow your "Retire in" month. The Forecast table and its Changes column, the Data column breakdown, the Monthly Budget totals and the projection all read the same months, and a loan row synced from the Accounts page now ends in the month the loan is paid off (or the month before a planned sale of the home). Rows without a month are unchanged. Built from a user request.

COBRA and other temporary coverage before the marketplace New

The Health Care box gains "Temporary coverage before the marketplace": up to two arrangements (COBRA, an employer or retiree plan, or other coverage), each covering you, your spouse or both, with one monthly premium in today's dollars. An arrangement starts at your retirement or your spouse's and ends after a number of months, at an age, at Medicare, or when your spouse retires. While it runs, the plan charges its premium on top of your spending (a cost, never a tax) and does not charge that person a marketplace premium; the marketplace takes over the month it ends, with no gap and no overlap. Each covered person moves to Medicare in their own 65th-birthday month. The Healthcare and Spending charts show the premiums as their own band, and the chart badge names the month the marketplace begins. Built from a user request.

Retire in the month you choose New

Retirement Age has always meant your birthday month. Each of you now has a "Retire in" control beside it: leave it on "On my birthday" and nothing changes, or pick a month and the plan retires you in the first occurrence of that month at or after your retirement birthday, with the exact month, year and age shown as you choose. Everything follows that one month: your salary and contributions stop before it, spending and withdrawals begin in it, marketplace health coverage starts in it, and anything anchored "at retirement" (part-time income, extra withdrawals, one-time benefits, a Employment Income stop) moves with it. Anchors also gain a "+ months" offset. The Summary, the chart's retirement marker and the withdrawal plan sentences name the month. Built from a user request.

"At spouse's retirement" now means your spouse's retirement FixedCan change your numbers

Retirement Income, Extra Withdrawals and One-Time Benefits can be anchored to your spouse's retirement. The projection was reading your spouse's retirement age as if it were your own age, so for a spouse five years younger the item started five years too early. It now starts in the month your spouse actually retires. Plans using that anchor with a spouse of a different age will see the item move to the right year.

Lump-sum and one-time months are calendar months FixedCan change your numbers

The Month dropdown on Extra Withdrawal lump sums, on College lump sums and semesters, and now on One-Time Benefits, is labeled January to December, but the projection counted the month from your birthday instead. A June lump sum for someone born in October actually landed in March. Every month you pick now lands in the calendar month it names, in the first occurrence at or after the birthday of the age you chose. Plans with a lump-sum schedule and a birthday other than January will see the payment move to the month they entered. One-Time Benefits gain a Month Received control; existing benefits keep landing in the birthday month until you change it.

Contributions run until the month you retire FixedCan change your numbers

Retirement contributions stopped in the January of the year you reach your retirement age, up to eleven months before the birthday the rest of the plan treats as your retirement month. A spouse's contributions had the opposite problem in some views, running up to eleven months past the spouse's birthday. Both now stop in the month each person is first modeled as retired, the same boundary salary and withdrawals use. Plans whose birthdays are not in January will see slightly more of the primary's contributions and, for couples, slightly fewer of the spouse's in that final year.

A spouse's salary no longer applies when their income box is off FixedCan change your numbers

A saved plan could carry a hidden spouse salary that kept paying (and funding contributions) even though the plan showed them not working.

Spousal Social Security coordination now grows to the start date FixedCan change your numbers

With coordination on and "grow this amount with COLA before I start collecting" checked, the spouse's benefit was paid at its today's-dollar figure with no growth to the start age, under-paying by the full inflation factor (about a third at 12 years out). Both the spouse's own benefit and the spousal excess now escalate to the start date, exactly like the primary benefit always did. Plans using coordination will show higher spousal benefits and higher ending balances. If you worked around this by turning coordination off and entering the total directly, you can turn coordination back on.

Inherited IRA withdrawals are now taxed FixedCan change your numbers

On plans that work backwards from a spending target, money taken out of an inherited pre-tax IRA was deposited to cash and spent, but never added to your taxable income. Those distributions are ordinary income and are now taxed as such. If your plan holds an inherited pre-tax IRA, your lifetime tax figure goes up and your ending balance comes down. Plans without one, and inherited Roth accounts, are unchanged.

Chance of Success now counts your HSA FixedCan change your numbers

The Dashboard already counted HSA balances when judging whether a run stayed funded, but the Chance of Success tab and the Summary card stopped at cash. The same plan could show two different success rates in two places. All three now count the same money. If your plan has an HSA your success rate may rise slightly; plans without one are unchanged.

A pension that has already started keeps its start age FixedCan change your numbers

If you had already begun collecting a pension, loading your plan pushed its start age forward to your current age, so the income appeared to begin later than you entered. Saved start ages are now preserved on load. This mainly affected people already retired.

Taxes follow the real rules Can change your numbers

• Income that was missing from your tax bill is now taxed: defined-benefit pensions, annuities, deferred compensation, interest and dividends, and capital gains from property or asset sales were previously spent tax free.
• Couples now file as two individual returns, each with their own Basic Personal Amount, credits, and brackets. Most couples will see lower taxes. Pension income splitting applies by default (turn it off in Advanced tax settings), and the OAS clawback is now per person, so a couple earning $60,000 each no longer loses OAS to a threshold meant for individuals.
• Eligible Canadian dividends get the 38% gross-up and the federal dividend tax credit. Provincial dividend credits are not yet modeled, so dividend tax runs slightly high.

CPP and OAS claiming ages are now priced New

Tell the CPP/OAS box whether your amounts are age-65 estimates or what you will actually receive. With age-65 estimates, the projection applies the real adjustments: CPP pays 36% less at 60 and 42% more at 70, and OAS pays 36% more at 70, with a comparison table on the box. OAS also rises 10% automatically at age 75.

CRA contribution limits and RRIF rules Can change your numbers

• One RRSP limit per person across RRSP-type accounts ($33,810 for 2026, or 18% of modelled salary), TFSA ($7,000) and FHSA ($8,000) limits, and RRSP contributions ending after the year you turn 71. The Contribution Planner is fully available for Canadian plans. Carry-forward room is not tracked.
• RRIF minimums start at 72 even if you retire later, are taxed, and the remainder is saved to cash.
• RRIF minimum percentages now use your age at the start of each year, as the CRA specifies; minimums were slightly too high before and are now slightly lower.

Provincial completeness Can change your numbers

• The Ontario Health Premium is now charged (up to $900 per person per year).
• Provincial senior credits (Age Amount and Pension Income Amount) now apply in Ontario, BC, Alberta, and Quebec.
• Quebec plans get the 16.5% federal abatement, roughly 9% off a typical Quebec retiree's total bill, and QPP payroll rates when modeling working-years income.
• Ontario's frozen top-bracket thresholds no longer rise with inflation.

CPP and OAS now start the month after your birthday FixedCan change your numbers

Both benefits were starting in January of the year after you reached your claiming age, up to eleven months late. They now begin the month after the birthday, the way they actually arrive. Canadian plans pick up close to a year of benefit income they were previously missing, so ending balances rise.

Growth before you claim New

If your CPP or OAS figure came from a Service Canada statement, it is in today's money. Tick the new option on the box and the projection grows that amount with inflation every year until you claim, instead of paying the entered figure unchanged years later. Each person has their own setting. New plans start with it on; every existing saved plan loads with it off and is completely unchanged until you turn it on.

Canadian estates now use deemed disposition FixedCan change your numbers

Estate projections for Canadian plans were applying US rules: a Roth node, a step-up in basis that erased accumulated gains, and US-style estate tax. Canada instead treats your assets as sold at death and taxes the gains on your final return. Canadian estates now follow that, so the share reaching your heirs changes (in our test plan, from 95% to 94%). This remains a proxy: provincial probate fees are not modeled, and a single rate is used for deemed gains.

Couples are now taxed as two individuals Can change your numbers

The UK taxes individuals, but couples' plans were previously computed as one pooled return with a single Personal Allowance. Every UK couple now gets two returns: each partner's own Personal Allowance, own tax bands, and own tapering, with pension withdrawals attributed by ownership. Couples' taxes go down, in some cases substantially (an equal-income couple on £30,000 each was overpaying by about £4,460 per year). Each partner also now has their own 25% tax-free lump sum allowance. Single-person plans are unchanged.

Your State Pension amount no longer drifts FixedCan change your numbers

Two problems compounded here. The weekly amount you entered was replaced by the default figure every time your plan loaded, and if you were deferring, the deferral increase was recalculated against a fixed age 66 and folded back into the stored amount on each reload, so a deferred pension grew a little larger every time you opened the plan. Both are fixed, and deferral is now measured from your real State Pension age. A plan saved while this was happening will read slightly lower once, which is the correct figure.

The State Pension starts when you reach State Pension age FixedCan change your numbers

With no start month recorded, payments began in January of the following calendar year, up to eleven months late. An absent month now means the month you reach State Pension age.

Growth before you claim New

A gov.uk forecast is quoted in today's money. Tick the new option on the State Pension box and the projection uprates that amount with inflation each year until you claim. New plans start with it on; existing saved plans load with it off and are unchanged until you turn it on. Where you are also deferring, the deferral increase applies on top of the uprated amount.

Lifetime ISA balances now reach your projection FixedCan change your numbers

A LISA balance was not being passed through to the projection engine, so its pre-60 withdrawal restriction never applied and the money could be drawn on at any age. LISA accounts now follow their access rules.

Cleanup round Improved

US-only concepts (Social Security inputs, HSAs, deferred compensation) are now fully hidden for UK plans instead of quietly doing nothing, terminology and help copy use UK terms throughout, estate planning wording matches UK trust and inheritance-tax concepts, and Coach suggestions no longer recommend US-only moves to UK households. The Contribution Planner also now lets UK plans set each account's yearly amount directly.

• If a subscription payment fails, we now email you with exactly how to fix it (Account, then Manage Billing), and your access continues during a grace period while the charge is retried.
• If your bank asks you to confirm a payment (the extra verification step common for European cards), you now get an email with a secure link to complete it.
• Subscriptions that end after failed payments now end access at the date you actually paid through.
• Not ready to decide? The cancel flow can now extend your trial by 7 days with one click.

• A Jump menu at the top of the settings panel shows which box you are in and jumps to any other, so you no longer scroll up and down hunting for a setting. Built from a user request.
• Switching country now asks "Switch to Canada?" (or the country you chose) and keeps your choice showing while it asks. Cancelling puts the old country back and says so, where before the dropdown snapped back before the question appeared and a missed dialog left the plan quietly on the United States. Built from a user report.
• Plans outside the United States no longer see US wording in a few places: the Add box subtitles, the Optimizer headline, the annuity tax note, the working-years shortfall note, the withdrawal information strip (RRIF for Canada, nothing where there is no required minimum), and dollar signs in the Allocation Explorer, the estate summary, and the Optimizer's sample card for UK plans.
• Clicking a chart bar now selects the matching Data Summary year (it could be one year off after certain updates).
• Charts with no data no longer show a stale copy of the previous chart, and chart tooltips no longer inherit the previous chart's width limits.
• The Your Taxes page no longer overstates annual figures twelvefold in certain views, and partial first years are labeled honestly.
• The Income chart's yearly bars now cover the same age-years as the Data Summary, so the two always agree.
• Every yearly chart now means what its labels say. The Withdrawals, Spending, Accounts and Allocation by Account charts used to divide your plan into twelve-month blocks counted from today, then label each block with your age at its start. Unless you were born in the month your plan begins, a block held months from two different ages, so a withdrawal set to age 64 could show up partly in the bar marked 63, and the same dollars landed in different bars on different charts. Bars now run birthday to birthday, like the rest of the app, so a bar marked 64 holds the year you were 64 and every chart agrees with the Data Summary beside it. The first and last bars of a plan are usually shorter than a full year, which is the honest length of those years; hover one and the tooltip names the real months and says how many. Those two bars can differ from what you saw before. Full years are unchanged, and so are the numbers for anyone whose plan starts in their birthday month.
• Fixed a dark band that could appear below the Charts & Data table on some tabs.
• Slightly larger minimum text size across the app for readability.
• You're reading it: release notes now live in the app, from the sidebar.
• The Table's balance "Total" column is now labeled "Total (incl. cash)" with tooltips, so you can check it without double-counting the Cash column.
• With the display set to Today's Dollars, the Table's "Today's $" column no longer deflates already-adjusted figures a second time.
• The Taxes box is easier to read: long explanations moved into "?" help popups, and settings that cannot affect your plan stay hidden.
• The Health Care, Allocation Planner, and Budget pages follow new cleaner designs, and chart bars across the app share consistent rounded corners.
• Fixed a rare sequence where loading a plan in two places could overwrite newer settings with older ones.
• Deleting a plan you were editing no longer overwrites your Master Plan. Its settings stayed loaded under the Master Plan name, so the next automatic save wrote them over your master copy.
• Shared plans no longer carry your identity. Anonymous share links and the Community lists included the owner's username and account id, and typed profile names were visible to viewers. Links now carry neither, and profile names read as Primary and Spouse for anyone but you.
• Visiting the Chance of Success tab no longer changes how your plan calculates. Leaving that tab for most other pages left the plan in Monte Carlo mode, so the next time you opened it there was no main projection.
• In Charts & Data, the yearly Liabilities column showed January's debt and the HSA healthcare column showed a single month next to a full year's RMDs. Both now cover the whole year.
• Your employer match percentages now show the values you saved. They read 0% until you touched the sliders, even though the projection was using your real match all along.
• An edit made in the last few seconds before you left a page is now saved instead of being dropped.
• Help popups and windows now close when you switch tabs, instead of staying open over the new page.
• Switching country no longer quietly discards your retirement ages, spending, returns, filing status, and state. It now replaces only settings you never changed, and swaps Social Security for the local equivalent instead of leaving you with neither.