Summary & Coach

Your plan in plain English, and what is worth a look next

A retirement plan is only useful if you can read it. The Summary, the first tab in your plan, starts with a verdict written from your own numbers: where your plan stands, the evidence behind it, and anything you still need to fill in.

Below it, each card answers a question you would ask out loud. The Coach ranks what is worth a look and takes you straight to the setting. The Learning Library explains the big retirement ideas using your own plan.

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The Summary and Coach in 18 seconds, on Chris and Jamie's example plan.
The Summary tab: the verdict Your retirement plan is in strong shape, with a Review your top opportunities button, above cards for a 100% Chance of Success, net worth today of $2,810,000 and projected net worth

The top of the Summary for Chris and Jamie, a made-up couple we use in our examples.

The Summary

A straight answer, then the evidence

The verdict at the top says whether your plan is on track, close, or needs attention. Its first sentence is your Chance of Success: "Your savings lasted to age 95 in all 119 of the historical market scenarios we tested." The rest picks facts from your plan, such as what is still in your name at the end, your first-year withdrawal rate and the years until you retire.

Under it, each card answers one question:

  • Will the money last? Chance of success and projected net worth
  • What are we worth today? Net worth today
  • Where does our retirement income come from? Retirement cash flow
  • How do we compare with people our age? How you compare
  • What will we pay in tax over our lifetime? Lifetime taxes & Medicare
  • What is coming up? Upcoming milestones

Click a card to land on the details. One switch shows the Summary in future dollars or today's dollars, the same switch as on your Dashboard, and the page refreshes itself after every change to your plan.

Three Summary cards: retirement cash flow for the first year of retirement, money coming in against monthly spending; Wealthier than 88% of US households aged 55-64 by net worth; and lifetime taxes and Medicare of $2,864,817, split into federal, state, Medicare and IRMAA, property tax, investment surtax and other taxes

Lower on Chris and Jamie's Summary: their first year of retirement, how they compare, and every tax they pay.

The Coach: filter chips for All 13, Risks, Strategy ideas, Plan details and Try this; a ranked list of suggestions, led by Your income exceeds the ACA subsidy limit before Medicare; and on the right, Why this matters, What you can do and an Open the Optimizer button

The Coach, reviewing Chris and Jamie's plan.

The Coach · Planner+

Suggestions drawn from your own plan

The internet is full of money advice written for nobody in particular. The Coach works from your plan: your projection, your last Chance of Success result, your accounts and what the Optimizer found. It ranks what is worth a look and explains why in a couple of sentences.

Every suggestion comes with:

  • Why it matters, in your plan's numbers
  • What you can do about it
  • A button that takes you where the change is made: a box in your plan, Accounts & Assets, the Optimizer, Chance of Success, Your Taxes or a Learning Library guide

The Coach never changes your plan. Nothing moves until you change it yourself. Weighed an idea and set it aside? Dismiss it, and restore it whenever you like.

What the Coach looks at

Risks, dates and ideas worth a look

Risks come first, then key dates, strategy ideas, plan details and ideas to try, with the biggest dollar amounts at the top of each group.

  • Risks: money that runs out or finishes with little to spare, a Chance of Success under 70%, tax alerts such as the ACA subsidy limit
  • Key dates: required minimums within three years, your Social Security claim within six months, your Medicare enrollment window
  • Strategy ideas: low-tax years for Roth conversions, required minimums taxed higher than needed, a lot of cash on the sidelines
  • Plan details: old account balances, a spouse in the plan but filing Single, optimistic assumptions
  • Try this: claiming Social Security at 70, a rough first decade, a spending smile, spending guardrails

Take Chris and Jamie. In four of their years before Medicare, their income sits above the subsidy limit for marketplace health insurance, so they pay the full premium. The Coach caught it, and one click takes them to the Optimizer's ACA subsidy limit target, to see whether staying under the line is worth it.

A Coach risk: Your income exceeds the ACA subsidy limit before Medicare. In 4 pre-65 years, ages 62 to 64, income is above the 400% of poverty level limit, about $94,957 for a household of 2. What you can do: try the ACA subsidy limit target in the Optimizer, with an Open the Optimizer button and Dismiss this suggestion

The Coach's first warning for Chris and Jamie, with its button to the Optimizer.

Finish your setup

The Plan completeness card checks six essentials: your profile, location and filing, accounts, income sources, spending and assumptions. Each one still open has an Add button that takes you to where you fill it in.

When something is missing, the verdict says so, and Finish your setup takes you to this card. It checks whether you changed the starting values, not whether your numbers are right, so keeping a default on purpose is fine.

Key assumptions shows the six inputs every number depends on, so you can check your plan says what you think it says.

Find your way back

When a card, a Coach button or another link takes you somewhere else, a trail appears under the header, such as ← Summary › Coach.

Click the step with the arrow to go back to exactly where you were: the same Coach suggestion selected, the same place on the page.

Clicking a tab or the side menu starts afresh, as it always has.

Print it or share it

The Ready Report tile at the top of the Summary makes a PDF of your plan, or spreadsheets of its numbers, to print or share.

Beside it, the Help pages tile opens the step-by-step help in a new browser tab, so your plan stays open.

The Retirement Spending Smile guide: the plan's smile is off, the curve if turned on dips 25% at 81, and it would mean $442,680 less spending across the plan in today's dollars, above a live spending curve from 62 to 94 with points to drag

The Spending Smile guide, worked out on Chris and Jamie's own plan, with a curve you can drag.

The Learning Library

Guides that use your numbers

Most retirement articles work through someone else's example. These guides use your plan instead. The required minimums guide shows your own required withdrawals, the Social Security guide lays out your own claiming ages, and the taxes guide has a bracket explorer loaded with your income.

More than a dozen guides so far, including:

  • How Taxes Work in Retirement
  • When to Claim Social Security
  • Required Minimum Distributions
  • The Retirement Spending Smile and Spending Guardrails
  • IRMAA and Medicare Surcharges
  • What Return Should You Assume?

The Keep learning card on your Summary picks three for your plan. A few guides can act on what you read: drag your own spending smile, or apply a guardrails style or a Social Security claiming age to your plan. The library is open to every account, a Preview account included.

Guides about US rules step aside on Canadian and UK plans.

Preview Free to get started

  • The verdict at the top of your Summary
  • Chance of success, Net worth today, Projected net worth and Retirement cash flow
  • How you compare (US plans)
  • Plan completeness, Key assumptions, Upcoming milestones and Keep learning
  • The Learning Library

Planner+ Planner+ adds

  • The Coach, with every suggestion and its button to the setting
  • Lifetime taxes & Medicare, and Income thresholds (US plans)
  • The Optimizer card (the Optimizer tab itself works on Preview)
  • Financial wellness and Progress
  • Applying a claiming age from the Social Security guide
Want every detail? Read the full guide, The Summary and the Coach, in our help center. Read the guide

Ideas to weigh, not instructions

The verdict, the Coach and the guides work from your own plan and assumptions. Real returns, tax law and your life will differ, and the Coach never changes your plan for you. Ready Aim Retire is an educational tool, not financial, tax or investment advice.

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