Retirement and assumptions

Your retirement age is when your pay stops. If you’re planning with a partner, each of you has your own. Your plan runs through the year you reach the age you set for its end.

For retirement spending, enter a monthly amount or a share of what you spend today. It rises each year with prices, in place of the spending you entered. Mortgage, property and loan costs are charged on top.

LongSpan fills in starting rates so your forecast works right away. They’re long-term estimates for the decades a plan spans, not a forecast or a recommendation, so change any that doesn’t fit your plan.

The figures on this step come from one run of your plan at your rates. The market range on your dashboard runs the same plan through 500 sequences of past market years, at LongSpan’s long-term rates rather than yours, so it shows how your rates compare.

Your bills are paid from cash. Left empty, your plan holds a year of spending. Set your own amount instead, and LongSpan invests anything above it and sells investments to cover a shortfall, the same way a withdrawal would.

If you plan to move, add the state and the year. LongSpan charges each year’s state income tax where you live that year. A state with no income tax charges none.

Your expenses and contributions rise by the inflation rate each year.

LongSpan estimates your income tax from your income, filing status and state. If you enter your own rate, it covers income tax on pay and tax-deferred withdrawals. LongSpan still works out tax on investment gains, Social Security and payroll separately.

A Roth conversion moves tax-deferred savings, like a traditional IRA, into a Roth. Each year, LongSpan converts enough to reach the top of the tax bracket you choose and no further, and charges the tax that year. It takes any required withdrawal first and never converts it.

You pay tax sooner for a smaller tax-deferred balance later, which means smaller required withdrawals and less taxable income in later years.