Overview
Our Retirement Planner helps you explore different savings scenarios for retirement. You can use your existing investment data or enter your own details—such as current investments, planned contributions, living expenses, and expected retirement income—to generate a personalized projection. The results appear in a graph, and you can adjust your information to see how different choices may affect your projected savings.
To access the Retirement Planner, select Planning Tools from the left-side navigation menu, then open the Retirement Planner tab. This feature is currently available only on the Quicken Simplifi Web App.
Note: The Retirement Planner is a planning tool that gives general estimates. It should not be the only resource used to make retirement decisions.
Entering Data - Basic
The Basic option makes the projection easier by reducing the amount of information needed, such as combining your tax and tax-deferred investments into one total.
Age: Enter your current age.
Current investments: Enter the total value of all your investments, including taxable and tax-deferred accounts.
Annual investment contribution: Enter the total amount you contribute each year, including taxable and tax-deferred accounts.
Retirement age: Enter the age at which you plan to retire.
Life expectancy: Many factors affect how long a person may live. You can use the linked calculator to estimate your life expectancy.
Annual living expenses: Enter your expected yearly expenses after retirement. This amount will be subtracted from your retirement savings each year in the calculation.
Annual retirement income: Enter any expected income, such as Social Security or other non-investment income after taxes.
Investment returns: Choose the rate of return you expect from your investments.
Pre-retirement tax rate: Enter your current tax rate. This is usually higher during your working years.
Post-retirement tax rate: Enter the tax rate you expect after retiring. This is often lower since your income may decrease.
Entering Data - Advanced
The Advanced option provides additional fields, such as separating tax and tax-deferred amounts, adding yearly increases to contributions, and choosing your own inflation rate.
Age: Enter your current age.
Already taxed investment balance: Enter the total balance of accounts where taxes have already been paid, such as Roth IRAs and brokerage accounts.
Tax-deferred investment balance: Enter the total balance of accounts where taxes have not been paid yet, such as Traditional IRAs and 401(k) accounts.
Annual taxable contributions: Enter the total amount you contribute each year to after-tax accounts, such as Roth IRAs.
Annual tax-deferred contributions: Enter the total amount you contribute each year to pre-tax accounts, such as 401(k)s and 403(b)s. Taxes are usually paid when you withdraw the money in retirement.
Expected annual increase of contributions: Choose how much you expect your yearly contributions to increase over time.
Retirement age: Enter the age at which you plan to retire.
Life expectancy: Many factors affect how long a person may live. You can use the linked calculator to estimate your life expectancy.
Annual living expenses: Enter your expected yearly expenses after retirement. This amount will be subtracted from your retirement savings each year in the calculation.
Annual retirement income: Enter any expected income, such as Social Security or other non-investment income after taxes.
Inflation rate: The default rate is 3%, but you can change it if needed.
Pre-retirement investment returns: Choose the rate of return you expect before
retirement.
Post-retirement investment returns: Choose the rate of return you expect after
retirement.
Pre-retirement tax rate: Enter your current tax rate. This is usually higher while you are working.
Post-retirement tax rate: Enter the tax rate you expect after retiring. This is often lower if your income decreases.
Using the Retirement Planner
Whether you use your existing data or enter your own, as described above, any changes will update the graph right away. You can try different values to see how each one affects your projected retirement savings.
You’ll also see high and low estimates (90th and 10th percentiles) along with your projected line, and you can adjust future amounts for inflation. These options help you plan for different retirement scenarios.
If you have any questions about using the Retirement Planner in Quicken Simplifi, our support team is here to help.