Plan retirement as a couple in one place — two careers, real Social Security and pensions, savings and bills. Enter each of you once and everything updates live: can you both retire when you want, what changes if one keeps working, and what happens to whoever is left. Runs entirely in your browser.
Your plan:Everything you enter is saved in this browser automatically — nothing is uploaded. Download the plan to back it up or move it to another device. (To pull in one person from a calculator file, use Pre-fill on their card.)
Social Security earnings
Paste your earnings straight from your my Social Security statement, or add years by hand. The Medicare column is ignored automatically.
Social Security pays benefits to your children on your record — 50% of your full retirement amount once a parent claims, 75% once a parent has died. That normally ends at 18. If a child's disability began before age 22, there is no age limit at all and it pays for life, and it lets a surviving spouse draw a caregiver benefit at any age. Everything on one record is capped by the Social Security family maximum.
What the “family maximum” is. Social Security caps the total it will pay on any one person’s record. The cap is set by your full retirement amount and works out to roughly 150–188% of it — higher earners land nearer the bottom of that range. You always receive your own benefit in full; your spouse and children share whatever is left underneath the cap, and if their claims add up to more than that, each one is cut by the same proportion. This is why a child can be paid less than the headline 50% while you are alive: your own benefit is taking up most of the room. Once you have died there is no benefit of yours in the way, so survivors share the whole cap — which is usually why the figure goes up rather than down. Two things sit outside it: a benefit your spouse draws on their own work record, and any delayed retirement credits you earned by claiming late, which is why a family can lawfully be paid more than the maximum.
Planning with a disabled adult child. These benefits are paid on your record and continue for your child's lifetime — they don't stop when you or your spouse dies, which is why the figure below is a genuine lifetime floor and a useful starting point for sizing a special-needs trust. Three things this tool does not model, and that you should not plan around without a benefits professional: how this income interacts with SSI (it can displace it, though Medicaid usually continues under a specific protection), ABLE account limits, and the fact that a child's benefit generally ends on marriage (with a narrow exception for marrying another disabled adult child). The disability must have begun before 22, even if the claim comes much later.
Bills in retirement
Everyday spending plus any expense that starts or ends later — a mortgage that pays off, long-term care that begins in your 80s, a one-time cost. Amounts are today's $/yr; ages are Person A's (leave blank for "from retirement" / "never ends").
Applied to living expenses by Person A's age (healthcare is separate and never tapers).
Health insurance
Tax & withdrawals
The household draws from savings whatever it takes to cover your bills after Social Security, pensions and any wages — so the balance chart shows whether the money actually lasts. There's no "start withdrawals at age X" setting: money comes out only in years your income doesn't cover the bills. Assumption — penalty-free money first. "Draw savings from" chooses between Traditional and Roth. When pre-tax money is taken, this tool pulls from whichever of you can access it without the 10% early-withdrawal penalty before touching the other's, rather than splitting it pro-rata. That mirrors what you'd actually do: if one of you left work at 55+ (or is past 59½) and the other didn't, there's no reason to pay a penalty on the second account while the first is available. A penalty only appears if the penalty-free balance runs out, or neither of you qualifies yet — and the year table shows a Penalty column when that happens.
🕊️ Survivor scenario a big reason to plan jointly
If one of you passes first, is the other OK? We default to the higher earner passing at their life expectancy.
👨👩👧 Your children's Social Security
What each child is paid on a parent's record, and for how long. Amounts follow the “Show dollars as” setting above.
🪜 Roth conversions low-income bridge years
Between retirement and RMDs (age 73), your income often dips — a window to move money from Traditional to Roth at a low tax rate. It shrinks the RMDs on that big traditional balance later, and locks in today's married-filing-jointly rates before the survivor faces single-filer ones.
🗺️ Where should you retire? state tax + cost of living
A rough relative comparison of your plan across states — state income tax on your retirement income (pensions, taxable draws, and Social Security where the state taxes it, with each state's retirement exclusions), typical property tax, and a cost-of-living multiplier on your living expenses. A framing tool, not a precise relocation calculator.
📊 Can you both retire when you want?
Your savings last to age
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at these plans
Peak yearly savings draw
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the hardest pull
Survivor keeps
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of joint income
Leanest gap to cover
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bridge years
Savings balance over time
📅 Year by year
Built on the same retirement engine (real Social Security + FERS math) as fedretirecalc.com and myretirecalc.com — load each person's data file to pre-fill their whole plan. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded. Estimates for planning and education only, not financial advice. Last updated 2026-09-06 · more calculators at PrivateCalcs.