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Educational content only — not financial, tax, or investment advice. In active development — how it's built and checked

Personal Finance · Interactive Tool

Your retirement accounts

Two decisions shape how much of your retirement you actually keep. When you claim Social Security sets a guaranteed, inflation-adjusted income for life — and waiting means bigger checks. Roth versus Traditional comes down to your tax rate now versus later. Both are worth getting right; neither needs a login.

Your retirement accounts
Inspired by Open Social Security by Mike Piper, the free, open-source gold standard. Use his for a real filing strategy; ours adds health, debt & survivor levers for intuition.
Sex (for life table)
SmokingCurrent smoking roughly doubles all-cause mortality; quitting recovers most of the gap over time. Illustrative hazard multipliers, not a medical model.
ExerciseRegular activity is associated with ~20–30% lower mortality. Illustrative.
Serious health conditionA diagnosed chronic or serious illness shortens life expectancy in the model, which tends to favor claiming earlier. Coarse, illustrative multipliers — a teaching device, not a medical prognosis.
Disabled adult child on your record?A child disabled before age 22 can draw on your Social Security record: about 50% of your full benefit while you're claiming, then 75% as a survivor benefit for their life after you're gone. Because that 50% only starts once you claim, it tends to favor claiming earlier. Educational — the family-maximum cap and the child's own eligibility/income rules aren't modeled.
Detail levelAdvanced adds federal taxation of your benefits and Medicare IRMAA surcharges. It needs a few more inputs and is only a rough estimate to inform a conversation with a professional.

Single-earner teaching model: no spousal, survivor, tax, or earnings-test rules. Benefits are in today's dollars. Data: SSA period life table, AWI, bend points, COLA.

Common claiming mistakes to avoid
  • "I get the greater of my own or a spousal/survivor benefit." You actually get your own benefit plus the amount a spousal or survivor benefit exceeds it — so both matter.
  • "A spousal benefit is half of what my spouse gets." It's half their PIA (full-retirement-age amount), regardless of when they claimed.
  • "Benefits lost to the earnings test are gone." If you claim before full retirement age and keep working, withheld benefits aren't lost — they're added back as a higher check at your full retirement age.
  • Surviving spouses can switch. You can take a survivor benefit and your own retirement benefit at different times, taking one while the other grows — use the "Surviving spouse" mode above.
  • The higher earner's early claim is permanent for the survivor. It doesn't just cut your own check — it lowers the survivor benefit your spouse may collect for life.
  • You can sometimes undo it. Withdraw an application within 12 months (and repay), or voluntarily suspend at full retirement age to earn delayed credits.
  • Remarrying before 60 can forfeit survivor benefits from a late spouse; remarrying after 60 doesn't.

Lifetime value by claiming age

$325K$330K$335K$340K$345K626364656667686970Claiming age →

Each bar is the expected lifetime benefit (survival-weighted, discounted to today) if you first claim at that age. The tallest is your optimum. Delaying trades smaller-but-sooner checks for bigger-but-later ones, and wins only if you're likely to live to collect them. The vertical axis is zoomed in: it starts at $325k, not $0 (note the break mark at its base), so these close-together values are easier to compare.

Your optimal age to claim68 yr 1 mo
Monthly check then
$2,608
vs. claiming at 62
$1,680
vs. claiming at 70
$2,976

At a 2% discount and your longevity, claiming at 68 yr 1 mo maximizes expected lifetime benefits ($342,153 in today's dollars). Breakeven for delaying to 70 is about age 80.

The health premium

Your habits imply a life expectancy of 82.3: right around the population average.

Fitness and not smoking buy longevity no portfolio can guarantee, an under-priced return that also happens to reshape this very decision.

The two decisions

  • When to claim Social Security. Claiming later means bigger checks for the rest of your life — inflation-adjusted longevity insurance you can't outlive. The breakeven age and a spouse's survivor benefit decide whether waiting pays for your situation.
  • Roth or Traditional. Roth is taxed now, Traditional is taxed later, so it turns on whether your tax rate is higher today or in retirement. And whatever you choose, capture the full employer match first: an instant, guaranteed return nothing else matches.

These are the account decisions behind a retirement plan; for whether the pile actually lasts once you're spending it, see the Will Your Money Last? tool. Educational only, not financial advice.

Sources & further reading

How this tool was made

Benefit calculations use the Social Security Administration's own published data — the national wage index, PIA bend points, COLAs, and the period life table — and reproduce the SSA's published worked examples exactly. The Roth and harvest-or-convert tabs run current IRS parameters (brackets, deductions, credit thresholds) against the figures you enter.

Research

  • Shoven, J. B., & Slavov, S. N. (2014). “Does It Pay to Delay Social Security?” Journal of Pension Economics & Finance 13(2): 121–144.

Data

Educational use only, not financial advice. Every figure traces back to the sources above or to the inputs you set — the full method and the source code are public.

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