RETIREMENT INCOME STRATEGY REPORT

A roadmap for
this household

Four strategies, modeled side by side — what you'll spend, what Roth conversions cost and save, and what's left for family.

A planning instrument, not a promise
CONTENTS
  1. Household
  2. Shared Assumptions
  3. Four Strategies
  4. Advanced — Tax & Legacy Assumptions
  5. Results
    1. Scenario comparison summary
    2. Net assets over time (all four strategies)
    3. What the plan actually pays in taxes, and the conversion-timing check
    4. Your legacy
    5. Year by year at a glance (tax savings, net assets)
    6. Year by year — full detail cards

Pages aren't numbered here since this table of contents is generated before final pagination — sections appear in the order listed above; each is clearly labeled where it begins.

EnlightnUEnlightnU WEALTH

A planning instrument, not a promise

01 Household02 Assumptions03 Strategies04 Advanced05 Results
EnlightnUEnlightnU WEALTH
A planning instrument, not a promise

See what compounds — and what gets taxed.

Model four retirement income strategies side by side: what you'll actually spend, what Roth conversions cost and save, and what's left for the people who come after you.

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01 Household

Who this plan is for

Enter each spouse's information in their own box below. Once you name them, every label throughout this tool — here and in the results — updates to use their actual name instead of "Spouse 1" / "Spouse 2".

Spouse 1

pre-tax, today's $ — not take-home pay. Just the paycheck; if there's also a pension or annuity, enter that separately below rather than folding it in here — salary stops at retirement, a pension typically doesn't.
age when the salary above stops; shared by all scenarios unless a scenario auto-optimizes it. Doesn't affect the pension fields below, which have their own start age.
defaults to 65; raise this if delaying enrollment (e.g. still covered by an employer plan). No IRMAA applies before enrollment, whatever the age.
Medicare generally uses income from your federal tax return from two years ago to determine your premiums. Do you have that return handy, or the relevant income figures from it? Medicare generally uses income from two years earlier to determine this year's income-related surcharges.
Line 11 of Form 1040 (adjusted gross income) plus any tax-exempt interest, from that year's actual return — used only for this household's first projected year of Medicare surcharges.
The same two-year lookback means the plan's second year is priced off the year just before the plan starts, not the two-years-ago year above. Do you have that return handy too, or the relevant income figures from it?
Same definition as above, for the year immediately before this plan starts — used only for the plan's second projected year of Medicare surcharges. From the third year on, the plan uses its own modeled income two years back, no estimate needed.
If not yet started: the amount it will actually pay once it begins (not today's dollars needing inflation, unlike Social Security below). If already receiving it: this year's actual payment.
Most private pensions pay a fixed dollar amount for life with no COLA, unlike Social Security — that's the default here. Check the box only if this specific pension is explicitly inflation-adjusted (some public-sector pensions are); if already receiving it, COLA increases (if checked) apply starting this year. Continues until death; doesn't count toward the Social Security earnings test or reduce benefits the way active salary can, and doesn't generate 401(k)/IRA contributions.
today's dollars, the amount on your SSA statement (SSA defaults to today's dollars unless you selected "future/inflated dollars") -- your own FRA may not be 67; enter the amount for whatever age SSA labels "full retirement age" on your statement. This is inflated forward automatically to the year you actually claim. If this spouse has little or no work history (e.g. a long-term stay-at-home parent), $0 is the right entry -- the plan automatically applies the spousal benefit (up to 50% of the other spouse's) as a floor, no separate estimate needed.
today's $
today's $

Spouse 2

pre-tax, today's $ — not take-home pay. Just the paycheck; if there's also a pension or annuity, enter that separately below rather than folding it in here — salary stops at retirement, a pension typically doesn't.
age when the salary above stops; shared by all scenarios unless a scenario auto-optimizes it. Doesn't affect the pension fields below, which have their own start age.
defaults to 65; raise this if delaying enrollment (e.g. still covered by an employer plan). No IRMAA applies before enrollment, whatever the age.
Medicare generally uses income from your federal tax return from two years ago to determine your premiums. Do you have that return handy, or the relevant income figures from it? Medicare generally uses income from two years earlier to determine this year's income-related surcharges.
Line 11 of Form 1040 (adjusted gross income) plus any tax-exempt interest, from that year's actual return — used only for this household's first projected year of Medicare surcharges.
The same two-year lookback means the plan's second year is priced off the year just before the plan starts, not the two-years-ago year above. Do you have that return handy too, or the relevant income figures from it?
Same definition as above, for the year immediately before this plan starts — used only for the plan's second projected year of Medicare surcharges. From the third year on, the plan uses its own modeled income two years back, no estimate needed.
If not yet started: the amount it will actually pay once it begins (not today's dollars needing inflation, unlike Social Security below). If already receiving it: this year's actual payment.
Most private pensions pay a fixed dollar amount for life with no COLA, unlike Social Security — that's the default here. Check the box only if this specific pension is explicitly inflation-adjusted (some public-sector pensions are); if already receiving it, COLA increases (if checked) apply starting this year. Continues until death; doesn't count toward the Social Security earnings test or reduce benefits the way active salary can, and doesn't generate 401(k)/IRA contributions.
today's dollars, the amount on your SSA statement (SSA defaults to today's dollars unless you selected "future/inflated dollars") -- your own FRA may not be 67; enter the amount for whatever age SSA labels "full retirement age" on your statement. This is inflated forward automatically to the year you actually claim. If this spouse has little or no work history (e.g. a long-term stay-at-home parent), $0 is the right entry -- the plan automatically applies the spousal benefit (up to 50% of the other spouse's) as a floor, no separate estimate needed.
today's $
today's $

The plan runs, and the year-by-year cards render, all the way to whichever spouse's death comes later — that's the point inheritance actually transfers. Once the first spouse dies, tax filing switches to Single for the survivor automatically.

02 Shared Assumptions

What applies to the household as a whole

%, applied to all accounts
brackets, deduction, spend target
%
%, defaults to 1 — a blended assumption: cash sitting idle earns roughly 0%, while capital actually invested would earn more but face real tax drag along the way (this model doesn't tax cash growth at any rate, a documented simplification). 1% is a deliberately modest middle ground, not cash left completely idle and not a fully invested, untaxed return either. This bucket still functions primarily as liquidity for tax payments, not a long-term investment, and assumes no losses along the way.
pays conversion taxes

Ongoing retirement contributions (set per spouse above) are added directly to the balance each year, inflating along with everything else, and stopping the same year that spouse's working income stops. Traditional contributions correctly reduce that year's taxable income (and spendable cash); Roth contributions reduce spendable cash but not taxable income, matching how each is actually taxed.

03 Four Strategies

Configure Scenario A, B, C, and D

A = do nothing, the control. B = Traditional, the textbook advice: fill a chosen tax bracket every year until RMDs force distributions anyway, then stop. C = Max for Heirs, fill the ceiling every year regardless of cost to you. D = Balanced, a middle ground between doing nothing (A) and converting aggressively (C). Configure however you like — these labels are just a starting point.

Scenario A Baseline

e.g. “do nothing” / max lifetime wealth
taxable-income target; 0 = no conversions

Scenario B Classic

e.g. Traditional — the textbook advice: fill a tax bracket every year until RMDs start, then stop
Every year until RMDs start, converts just enough to fill this bracket to the top — the classic "fill the bracket in the gap years" strategy. No manual ceiling to set; it's computed from the bracket and each year's actual other income.

Stops entirely once either spouse's RMDs begin — the simple textbook rule. It doesn't try to judge whether a further conversion would still be worthwhile after that point.

Scenario C Legacy

e.g. Max for Heirs — keep converting past RMD age if it still helps your heirs
taxable-income target; e.g. top of the 22% bracket
The figure this lands on is the best result under everything you entered (return, longevity, tax law, heirs' behavior) — not an objectively optimal real-world amount, since all of those are assumptions, not certainties.

Scenario D Balanced

e.g. Balanced — a middle ground between doing nothing (A) and converting aggressively (C)
modestly higher than A/C by default — part of what makes this a genuine middle ground, not just a smaller conversion
taxable-income target; strong enough to still out-inherit "do nothing" despite the higher spend above
04 Advanced

Tax & legacy assumptions

Computed automatically per spouse from birth year (SECURE 2.0: 73 for born 1951–59, 75 for born 1960+) — enter ages above to see each spouse's RMD start age.
% — 0 for federal-only
% on inherited Traditional $
Off by default. Both retirement (work stoppage) and a spouse's death are SSA-qualifying life-changing events that can support a request to base IRMAA on that year's own (typically lower) income instead of the usual two-year-old lookback -- but it's an application that has to be filed and approved, not an automatic recalculation. For retirement, this pivots on whichever spouse retires LATER (only counting spouses with real work income), since that's when household income actually reaches its post-retirement level. Leave unchecked to use the standard lookback throughout; check only if you want to model an assumed-successful appeal for whichever of these events actually occurs in the plan.
%/yr — the documented 2005-2024 average for Medicare Part B premium growth (vs. 2.6%/yr for Social Security COLA over the same period), not general inflation. Applied for the first 10 years only; after that, growth switches to your general inflation rate above, since assuming Medicare costs outpace inflation by this margin forever isn't defensible over a young client's 40-60 year horizon.
Recalculates instantly. Nothing leaves your browser.
05 Results

Scenario A vs. Scenario B vs. Scenario C vs. Scenario D

Every figure below assumes your spending target is fully spent each year — there's no requirement to spend it all, and unspent capital could be saved or redirected. The "Combined" row adds nominal spending summed over the whole plan to an inheritance valued at a single future date; it's arithmetically correct but not a discounted, apples-to-apples lifetime-value measure — useful for comparing scenarios against each other, not as a single "true" dollar figure. The "Tax savings vs. Baseline" rows compare each strategy directly to Scenario A, exactly as each is configured above — the real choice on the table, not a hypothetical version of the strategy that doesn't convert. If a strategy's claim ages or spend target also differ from Baseline's, that real difference is included in these figures, not isolated out.

Scenario A — Net Assets Scenario B — Net Assets Scenario C — Net Assets Scenario D — Net Assets

Solid line: while you're alive. Dotted line: the 10 years after — heirs holding the account, Traditional drawn down evenly while it keeps growing, Roth compounding tax-free the whole time.

What the plan actually pays in taxes — and what it buys

Compares what Baseline (A) actually pays against what the selected strategy actually pays, exactly as each is configured above — the basis for the "Tax savings vs. Baseline" figures elsewhere on this page, shown year by year instead of as a single lifetime total. Pick a scenario below, or use the Year by year cards further down — switch either one and both update. Continues through the same 10-year heir-hold window as the chart above, since a strategy that costs the household more during their own lifetime can still leave heirs paying meaningfully less — the running total below only tells the full story once both are included.

Baseline (A) — total tax Comparison scenario — total tax

Bars: that year's difference in tax paid (below the line means the strategy cost more that year; above means it saved). Full-color bars: while you're alive, your own tax. Fainter bars: the 10 years after second death, heirs' tax on whatever Traditional balance remains. Line: the running total across every year so far, through both periods — where it crosses from negative to positive is the point the strategy's cost has fully paid for itself, for the family as a whole.

Saved that year Cost that year Cumulative net saved (running total)

Was each strategy's conversion priced well?

A narrower, self-contained check per strategy: judged only against what that same money would have faced later via its own future RMDs — independent of the Baseline comparison above. A strategy can show an unfavorable rate here and still show real savings vs. Baseline above (or the reverse); this is about timing, the chart above is about the full real-world comparison.

Your legacy

Non-spouse heirs must empty an inherited account within 10 years. Traditional dollars are taxed on the way out; Roth dollars never are.

Year by year at a glance

Every year of the plan in one scrollable table, all four strategies side by side. Choose what to view below. Printed below: both metrics, each on its own page.

Year by year at a glance — Tax savings vs. Baseline

Year by year

This year's assumptions, the Roth conversion, and the actions to take — for whichever scenario you pick. This section runs long by design — use it to check specific years, not necessarily to read straight through.

06 Next Steps

Want to execute one of these strategies?

Send over your information and we'll follow up to build a real plan together. This opens your email client with everything filled in for you to review — nothing is sent automatically or stored anywhere.

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Thank you.

This is a planning illustration, not tax, legal, or investment advice. It assumes flat annual growth (no market volatility), federal tax brackets and IRMAA tiers held at current levels and adjusted only by the inflation rate you set, Traditional balances tracked separately per spouse (RMDs and penalties apply to each spouse's own account and age), a pooled Roth balance rather than separately tracked spousal Roth accounts, and any growth on the cash reserve is not taxed — real interest or dividend income would be.

Review your numbers with a qualified financial advisor and CPA before acting on anything shown here.

A planning instrument, not a promise