A retirement calculator, calibrated for honesty

Plan retirement against 10,000 futures, not one.

Most retirement calculators draw a single confident line into your future. We don't believe that line. RetireSafe runs ten thousand simulations against your real situation, including couples, pensions, long-term care, the tax your own country charges on the way out, and a bad run of markets landing right when you retire. Then it tells you, plainly, what's most likely to break.

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5 minutes, no signup Runs in your browser Premium · $65 lifetime

What a result looks like Illustration

AGE 425060708090+

MEDIAN 25–75% 5–95%

01 · What's different

Three things a 30-second estimate can't tell you.

Quick calculators are fine for a first look, and some of the free ones will even show you a range instead of a single line. Where they stop is the part that changes a decision: which of your own assumptions your plan is really resting on, and what happens if you change one of them.

01 / Honest rangeFree

A band, not a line

Every result is a range rather than a number: the middle 90% of 10,000 simulated futures, from the bad end to the good end. A single confident line is only the middle one of those. It hides the other 9,999 stories. We show all of them.

02 / Risk rankingPremium

Tells you what to worry about

We vary every input across its plausible range to see how much it swings your outcome, then rank what most threatens your specific plan. For some people that's long-term care. For others it's the market falling in the first years of retirement. We say which, and why.

03 / CounterfactualsPremium

Shows you what would change it

"Retire two years later." Does that move you from 73% to 91%, or from 73% to 76%? We work out changes like that in advance, so you can compare them directly instead of guessing.

02 · Methodology

If you don't trust the math, the answer is worthless.

Our methodology is published in full: not buried, not paywalled. You can read every assumption we make before you decide whether to pay us anything.

We treat the future as a range of outcomes, not a forecast. Markets, inflation, lifespan, long-term care and the tax you will owe are modelled together, in one simulation, so that bad years arrive at once the way they do in life.

Engine notes · v0.29.0 · methodology in full

Read full methodology

MARKETS

Stocks, bonds, cash and inflation are drawn together, not one at a time. A year of high inflation is a year your returns feel, because the four are drawn as one correlated set. Bad news arrives across the whole portfolio at once, the way it does in life.

LIFESPAN

Drawn from country-calibrated mortality tables, not a single life expectancy. For couples the two lifespans are linked, because partners share a household, habits and health shocks.

CARE COSTS

The chance long-term care begins rises steeply with age. Once it does, the cost grows on its own track, typically 5%/yr before inflation in our default region.

TAX

Withdrawals are charged by your country's actual rules, not a flat rate you guess at. Which account the money leaves, what that does to your bands, the credits and surcharges that switch on as your income moves, and the withdrawals the law makes you take once you reach the age.

COUNTRIES

Twenty of them, each carrying its own researched numbers rather than a shared default: when the state pension starts, what a survivor keeps, what care costs, and how you are taxed, down to the state or region where that changes the answer. Every figure shows where it came from and the date it was read.

RE-RUNS

Every run is seeded, so the same plan gives the same answer twice. When we re-run your plan with one thing changed, it meets the identical ten thousand futures, so the difference you see is the change you made and not a different roll of the dice.

RISK RANKING

Each of your inputs is varied across its plausible range to measure how much it swings your outcome, computed for your plan alone. The combinations tested are spread evenly across that range rather than drawn at random, which is what holds the ranking steady. Your number one risk may not be anyone else's.

Every method above has a name, a source and a version number. They are all set out in the full methodology.

03 · Pricing

One price. Once.

No subscription. No annual renewal. Pay once, keep your scenarios forever, get every methodology improvement we ship at no charge.

FreeFOREVER

$0/forever

Enough to see if the tool answers your question.

Your country's own pension, tax and cost figures
State or regional income tax where it applies
Single-person plans
10,000 simulated futures
Where your retirement income comes from, year by year
How your spending shifts with age
What-if changes, each one re-run in full: One per run
Plans saved to your account: 3
Saved in your browser, no account needed

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PremiumLIFETIME · ONCE

$65/once

Everything the engine can model: couples, long-term care, your tax bill broken open, what-if scenarios, PDF.

Couples, with linked lifespans and survivor income
Your home: mortgage, running costs, last-resort sale
Long-term care
What your tax bill is made of
What's most likely to break your plan, ranked
What-if changes, each one re-run in full: Every one that applies
PDF report for sharing

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