Guides
Plain-language walkthroughs of the parts of retirement planning where tools disagree and assumptions hide. Every guide states its sources, its limits, and the year its law-specific numbers apply to.
- Using an AI assistant with your retirement plan
Chatbots explain retirement rules well and compute them badly. How to connect one to a deterministic engine, and what still needs checking afterwards.
- Model a Roth conversion window without hiding the assumptions
The years between retiring and RMDs can be a low-tax window for Roth conversions, if the assumptions driving the math are honest. Here's what to check.
- Stress-testing a retirement plan against a bad first decade
Two retirements with identical average returns can end decades apart. What sequence risk is, why averages hide it, and how to stress-test a plan properly.
- Comparing Social Security claiming ages for a couple
For couples, claiming is two decisions with different jobs: the larger benefit is insurance on two lifetimes. How to compare scenarios honestly.
- Why retirement calculators disagree, and how to trace the difference
Two tools, same inputs, opposite verdicts. The seven assumptions that drive the gap, and how to audit any projection down to the year it diverges.
Guides are educational, not advice, and they never require an account or collect anything. New ones arrive as they're written: subscribe by RSS.