Six milestones between
you and a work-optional life.
Simple, private calculators for every stage of the climb — build your first buffer, clear every debt, and grow into a retirement you can count on. Your numbers are saved only on this device.
Answer five quick questions (or peek at an example household) and every calculator fills itself — no re-typing, and your numbers never leave this device.
Save $1,000 starter emergency fund
A small buffer so life's surprises don't send you back into debt.
Pay off all debt (except the house)
List every debt and build a debt-snowball payoff plan with extra payments.
3–6 months of expenses saved
A fully funded emergency fund, sized to your income and job security.
Roth Conversion Planner
Should new savings go pretax or Roth — and should you convert? A detailed year-by-year tax, RMD, and Social Security ledger.
Social Security Optimizer
Claim at 62, full retirement age, or 70? Compare monthly checks, lifetime totals, and the break-even ages where waiting starts to win.
Withdrawal Order Optimizer
Which account should you spend from first — pretax, Roth, or brokerage? Finds the tax-smart drawdown order and gives you a year-by-year plan to follow.
Retirement Planner
Your full household plan — accounts, Social Security, pensions, and spending — run through 1,000 Monte Carlo market simulations with taxes, RMDs, and your mortgage modeled.
Your profile
Enter your details here once, and they flow into every calculator — the retirement planner, Roth conversions, Social Security, and the withdrawal optimizer. No more re-typing your age, savings, and Social Security in each tool. Everything stays in your browser.
About you
Social Security
Don't know your Social Security benefit? Look it up on your statement at ssa.gov/myaccount, or leave it and refine later.
Pensions (if any)
Enter it before tax (gross). Pensions are held flat — no cost-of-living increases, the common case for private pensions — and start at that person's retirement age if you leave the start age blank.
Other income in retirement
Rental income, a side hustle, part-time work, royalties — anything besides Social Security and pensions. Today's dollars; we grow it with inflation.
Use it everywhere
Your profile fills each calculator automatically the first time you open it. You can also push it into all of them right now — and any tool where you've already entered numbers shows a "Fill from my profile" button so you stay in control.
Saved automatically as you type.
Want a human to look it over?
Send your full picture — numbers, goals, and questions — for a personal review. Your profile fills the form automatically.
Save your $1,000 starter fund
Before you attack debt, stash a small starter emergency fund. It keeps a flat tire or a vet bill from becoming new debt. Track your progress here.
The classic starter goal is $1,000, but set whatever fits you. Add what you can set aside each week or month to see your finish date.
Pay off all your debt
List every debt except your mortgage. Enter the balance, interest rate, and how long is left — we'll figure the minimum payment. Add any extra you can throw at a loan, and we'll build a debt-snowball plan: as each debt is cleared, its payment rolls onto the smallest remaining balance.
Milestone 2 achieved — you're consumer-debt-free. No credit cards, car loans, student loans, or personal loans. If that ever changes, flip back to "Yes" and build a payoff plan.
Build your full emergency fund
Once you're debt-free, save 3–6 months of living expenses in a plain savings account. How many months? It depends on how steady your income is — more earners and a more secure job mean you can lean toward 3; a single income or shaky work means aim for 6.
The essentials: housing, food, utilities, insurance, transportation, minimum payments.
Variable = commission, self-employed, seasonal, one-income risk, or a shaky industry.
Add what you can set aside each week or month to see your finish date.
Invest 15% for retirement
Figure out how to split 15% of your income across the right accounts, then categorize the funds you pick and check your whole-portfolio mix.
How to invest your 15%
Enter your income and 401(k) match. We'll follow the match-first order: capture the full employer match first, then max out your Roth IRA(s), then put any remainder back in the 401(k), and finally a taxable brokerage account for anything left over.
The 15% target is based on your combined household income.
Married households can fund two Roth IRAs.
At 50+, the per-person Roth IRA limit rises to the catch-up amount.
No match? Leave "up to" blank or 0 — we'll send you straight to a Roth IRA.
No match at the spouse's job? Leave it blank or 0.
Contribution limits (edit for the current tax year)
Defaults reflect the Roth IRA limit and its 50+ catch-up. Update them for the current tax year.
The four investing categories
This plan spreads your stock investing across four kinds of funds — a common approach is to put about 25% of your investing into each. Here's what each one means.
Growth
Large-cap U.S. growth stocks
Big, well-established American companies whose earnings are growing quickly — often large technology and consumer names. They tend to pay little or no dividend because they reinvest profits to keep expanding. More ups and downs than Growth & Income, with strong long-term potential.
Growth and Income
Large-cap U.S. value & dividend stocks
Large, steady "blue-chip" American companies that pay reliable dividends. They grow more slowly but hold up better in downturns — the dividends add income and smooth out the ride. The calmest of the four stock categories.
Aggressive Growth
Small- & mid-cap U.S. companies
Smaller American companies with lots of room to grow. These have the biggest swings of the four — the highest potential return, but the highest risk too. Often labeled "small-cap" funds.
International
Companies based outside the U.S.
Foreign stocks across developed and emerging markets. Adds geographic diversification, so your retirement isn't riding on the U.S. economy alone.
Bonds, target-date, balanced, and single-sector funds don't fit these four stock categories — the categorizer flags those separately.
Look up a fund
Enter one or more tickers to see how each breaks down across the four categories.
Separate multiple tickers with commas or spaces (up to 25). Covers about 5,500 mutual funds and ETFs — every share class from Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, iShares, SPDR, American Funds, T. Rowe Price, Invesco, Dodge & Cox, JPMorgan, PIMCO and Franklin Templeton — categorized from Morningstar data.
Your whole portfolio
Enter each investment you hold and roughly how much money is in it. You'll get the percent of your total portfolio in each of the four categories — weighted by dollars, including anything that falls outside the four.
Save for your kids' college
Once you're investing 15% for retirement, start setting money aside for your children's education. First things first:
Let us know if you have kids to see your college-savings options.
Pay off your home early
Enter your mortgage, then add any extra payments to see how much sooner you'd be mortgage-free and how much interest you'd save.
These two fill in automatically from your loan details — the payment from the standard amortization formula, the balance from how far into the loan you are. Override either if your real numbers differ (e.g. you've already been paying extra). Use principal + interest only, not the total with taxes/insurance escrow.
Extra payments
This is where the magic happens — every extra dollar goes straight to principal.
Retirement planner
Enter your household, accounts, Social Security, and any pension or other income. We'll run 1,000 market simulations, chart the range of outcomes, and suggest ways to strengthen your plan.
Your household
Who's in the plan, when you retire, how long to plan for, and the guaranteed income you'll collect — Social Security and pensions.
Social Security & pensions
Pensions are assumed to stay flat (no cost-of-living increases — the common case for private pensions) and to start at that person's retirement age if you leave the start age blank. Married? Social Security spousal benefits are applied automatically: a spouse whose own full-retirement benefit is under 50% of the other's is topped up to that 50% (reduced for claiming early; waiting past full retirement age doesn't grow the spousal portion), starting once both have claimed. Enter each person's own benefit — even $0 — and we handle the rest. Already retired? Set your retirement age at or below your current age — we'll model you as living off the portfolio from day one, with no further contributions.
Spending, Social Security, and other income are in today's dollars — we adjust for inflation automatically. Enter pension and other income before tax (gross) — federal taxes are estimated for you in the cash-flow breakdown. Married and expect one of you to live longer? Set different plan-to ages: after the first passes, the survivor keeps the larger Social Security benefit, that person's pension ends, and taxes switch to single filing.
Other income in retirement
Rental income, a side hustle, part-time work, royalties — anything besides Social Security and pensions. Enter it in today's dollars; we grow it with inflation.
Blank ages mean it runs from your retirement age to your plan-to age. For income that ends (a side hustle you'll wind down, a rental you'll sell), set "until" earlier.
Accounts & contributions
Current balance and what you add each year while working — you and your spouse each have their own columns. Account type matters for taxes.
Cash earns nothing and is spent first. Savings/CDs grow at the yield set in the assumptions (interest is taxed as ordinary income) and are spent before market accounts.
Common for an emergency fund a couple wants to keep intact. A reserved account still grows and counts toward net worth, but the plan draws only from the rest — if those run out, you'll see a shortfall even though the reserve is untouched. (Tax-deferred RMDs are still withdrawn as the law requires, then reinvested.)
Home & real estate
Your home isn't part of the retirement drawdown, but it counts toward your net worth on the balance-sheet tab. Enter today's value — no free service can pull a Zillow estimate by address, so look up your Zestimate and paste it here.
Your mortgage and other debts are pulled automatically from the Mortgage (Milestone 6) and Debt Snowball (Milestone 2) steps for the balance sheet.
Spending in retirement
Your everyday spending without the mortgage — entered as one total or an itemized budget — plus big one-time costs like cars, weddings, and roofs. If you have a mortgage (from Milestone 6 or your profile), we add its payment on top automatically at its fixed dollar amount until the loan's payoff date, then drop it.
Big one-time & periodic expenses
On top of your regular spending — a new car, a wedding, a new roof. Amounts in today's $, at the age it first happens, repeating every N years (blank = one-time).
Example: a $35,000 car at age 66, every 8 years — modeled as extra withdrawals in those retirement years.
Simulation settings
Your household, accounts, and spending come from your profile — edit them there (or with the "Your profile" button in the corner) and they flow here automatically. Below: only what's specific to the simulation itself.
Simulation settings
Portfolio risk sets the average return and volatility the 1,000 market simulations draw from.
Assumptions (edit if you like)
Returns are drawn from a normal distribution each year (nominal). While anyone in the household is still working, the portfolio grows at the higher pre-retirement return; once you've both retired it switches to the (usually more conservative) in-retirement return — most people de-risk as they stop earning. Picking a risk level sets both returns & volatility. Leave the retirement return blank to use one rate throughout.
Social Security optimizer
Claim at 62 and collect longer, or wait for a bigger check? Enter your benefit at full retirement age and compare monthly checks, lifetime totals, and the break-even ages where waiting starts to win. Benefits grow each year with a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), and in married mode we factor in spousal benefits — including collecting on your own record first, then stepping up to the spousal amount once your higher-earning spouse claims.
Your numbers
Your benefit at full retirement age is on your Social Security statement at ssa.gov/myaccount — the "at full retirement age" figure.
Your monthly check at each claiming age
Early claiming shrinks your check permanently; each year you wait past full retirement age adds 8% until 70. The highlighted age collects the most by your plan-to age.
Lifetime benefits & break-even ages
Benefits by age, grown each year by your COLA assumption. Toggle between the chart and a year-by-year table of the yearly check and the running total for each strategy. On the chart, where the lines cross is the break-even — live past it and the later claim wins.
Includes the annual COLA, spousal benefits (the lower earner's own reduced check plus a spousal top-up — the excess of half the higher earner's full-retirement amount over the lower earner's own; both parts are permanently reduced for claiming before full retirement age, so claiming early on your own record means the eventual spousal total is below a full 50%), and the survivor step-up. It doesn't model taxes, the earnings test if you claim while still working, or benefits from an ex-spouse. For the full household picture with taxes and withdrawals, use the Retirement planner (Milestone 7).
What it means for you
Choose your claiming strategy
Pick the one you'll actually follow — it sets the claim ages across the profile, the retirement planner, and the withdrawal optimizer, and flows into your Put It All Together plan.
Tax-smart withdrawal optimizer
In retirement, which account you spend from first can change your lifetime tax bill by tens of thousands. This tool tests several drawdown orders — conventional, Roth-first, and "fill the low bracket" strategies — factoring in federal and state taxes, the taxation of Social Security, and RMDs, then hands you a year-by-year plan you can actually follow.
Your household
Portfolio withdrawals begin once you've both retired (while either of you still earns, we assume wages cover spending and the accounts simply grow). After the first plan-to age, the survivor keeps the larger Social Security benefit and taxes switch to single filing — the "widow's penalty" this tool is built to help you get ahead of.
Social Security
Each person's benefit at full retirement age, in today's dollars. The check you actually receive scales with the claiming age — permanently smaller before full retirement age, 8%-a-year bigger up to 70.
Claiming age × withdrawal order — optimized together
When you claim changes your taxes, and your withdrawal order changes what claiming age is worth — so we test them together: each claiming age gets its own freshly optimized withdrawal strategy. Select a row to lock in both.
Computing combinations…
Accounts
Household totals — combine both spouses' balances into each bucket; the plan draws from the household total.
Contributions are added each year while either of you is still working, and stop once withdrawals begin.
Assumptions & mortgage
The mortgage payment is held at its fixed dollar amount (mortgages don't grow with inflation) and drops out of your spending automatically from the payoff year on. It fills from your profile if you've entered the loan there.
The tax-smart order for you
How the strategies compare
Your year-by-year withdrawal plan
The recommended order, year by year — how much to pull from each account.
Educational estimate. Federal 2026 brackets + your state's own bracket schedule, Social Security provisional-income taxation, RMDs at 73/75, married→single filing after the first death, the extra standard deduction and the OBBBA senior bonus deduction for filers 65+ (the bonus applies 2025–2028 and phases out at higher incomes), and long-term capital gains on brokerage sales (including the 0% bracket — gains stack on top of ordinary income, so gains under the 0% capital-gains ceiling are tax-free) are modeled; IRMAA, NIIT, the earnings test, and in-year timing are not. "Money left at end" counts every account at face value — dollars still in pretax accounts would owe ordinary income tax when eventually withdrawn by you or your heirs. Confirm with a tax professional.
Put it all together
Your Social Security claiming strategy, your Roth conversion strategy, and your tax-smart withdrawal order — assembled into one plan you can follow (and hand to your spouse, your kids, or your advisor). Set each strategy in its own tool; this page reflects whatever you've chosen there, live.
Your household
Step 1 · What you're saving — Roth or Pretax
Compare the two on the Roth planner's Pretax vs. Roth tab, then click Select there.
Step 2 · Roth conversions
Loading your conversion strategy…
Change the conversion strategy in the Roth Conversion planner.
Step 3 · When to take Social Security
Fine-tune claiming ages in the Social Security optimizer, or pick a claiming-age × withdrawal combo in the SS × Withdrawals tool.
Step 4 · What accounts to draw from, when
Pick a different order or objective in the Withdrawal Order optimizer.
Your year-by-year action plan
From the first retirement on — what to pull from each account, and the tax each year triggers.
Fine print
This plan combines three educational estimates computed with 2026 federal tax law (progressive brackets, senior deductions, Social Security provisional-income taxation, the 0% capital-gains bracket, RMDs, married→single filing after the first death) and your state's bracket schedule. The withdrawal table and the Roth conversion schedule are computed by separate engines — conversions aren't overlaid on the withdrawal rows. Nothing here is investment, tax, or legal advice; confirm the details with a professional before acting. Generated by Alter Capital (altermilestones.com) — your numbers never left your browser.
Review my situation
Put your whole picture in one place — most of it fills in automatically from your profile — add your questions, and hit Submit. It goes straight to a private review inbox, and you'll hear back at the email you leave below.
How to reach you
Your household
Income, saving & Social Security
Assets, mortgage & spending
Questions / other pertinent information
Anything the numbers don't capture — goals, worries, pensions, health, inheritances, business interests, weird situations. The more context, the better the review.
Send it
Submitting sends everything above to a private review inbox — this is the one feature on this site where your numbers leave your browser, and only when you click Submit. You'll get a reply at the email you entered.
Roth Conversion Planner
Should new savings go pretax or Roth — and should you convert pretax money to Roth, and how much? This detailed planner runs your plan year by year with taxes, brackets, RMDs, and Social Security. Your inputs stay in your browser.