Common questions about using Plan My Retirement for Social Security timing, Roth conversions, early-retirement withdrawal rules, and tax-efficient drawdown planning.
There's no single right age — it depends on your health, your spouse's age, and other income. Rather than a simple break-even comparison, Plan My Retirement tests every claiming-age combination for you (and your spouse, if married) and recommends whichever maximizes your survival-weighted expected lifetime benefit, using SSA life tables — not a fixed to-a-certain-age comparison. The tool's Social Security summary tab shows the full comparison for every claiming age from 62 to 70. See the Social Security claiming optimizer for the full guide.
Plan My Retirement models Roth conversions automatically. Under its tax-strategy settings, it can convert pre-tax dollars to Roth each year up to a bracket you choose (12%, 22%, or 24%), funded from taxable savings. It doesn't just minimize taxes paid today — it tests dozens of combinations of conversion strategy, withdrawal order, and bracket management, and picks whichever leaves you with the largest ending account balance. See the Roth conversion calculator for the full guide and a worked example.
Yes. Enter a retirement age between 55 and 59½ and the model automatically applies the Rule of 55 — penalty-free 401(k) withdrawals for the year you leave a job at 55 or later — instead of the stricter early-withdrawal rules that apply if you retire earlier than that. See the Retire at 55 calculator for the full guide, including healthcare before Medicare and withdrawal sequencing.
Yes. If you retire before 55, the model can use a 72(t) Substantially Equal Periodic Payment (SEPP) schedule instead of the Rule of 55. It computes the IRS amortization-method annual payment and enforces the required 5-year/age-59½ minimum schedule automatically once a schedule begins — SEPP payments are legally locked in for that period, and the tool flags exactly which years are SEPP-bound in its year-by-year ledger. See the Retire at 55 calculator for how this fits into an early-retirement plan.
Plan My Retirement calculates Required Minimum Distributions automatically. Once you reach your RMD age (72, 73, or 75, depending on your birth year under SECURE 2.0), it computes your RMD each year from the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table and enforces it as a floor on that year's withdrawal, even in years your target spending would otherwise call for less.
Yes. For any year before age 65, the model estimates your ACA marketplace premium net of subsidy based on your projected income that year, and it caps Roth conversions so a conversion doesn't accidentally push your income over the subsidy cliff at 400% of the federal poverty level.
It depends on your tax bracket, account mix, and Social Security timing — which is exactly what a withdrawal-sequencing model like this one solves for. Each year, it finds the mix of pre-tax, Roth, and taxable withdrawals that covers your target spending, then compares dozens of combinations of bracket/IRMAA smoothing, Roth conversions, and SEPP elections to find whichever leaves the largest ending account balance — not just the lowest tax bill in any single year.