Retirewise

Retirewise App: Helping Plan Your Federal Retirement

Are you a federal employee wondering if you can retire comfortably with your current TSP savings? Our easy-to-use retirement app aligns with the “three-layer cake” analogy used in federal retirement seminars to help federal retirees understand whether the revenue from their pensions, social security and TSP covers expected retirement expenses.

Our free basic app provides a ball-park estimate of whether your TSP could pay for an annuity to cover your likely net cash needs after including your pension and social security income. The app also runs S&P 500 return scenarios as an alternative to buying an annuity. Higher risk, but possibly higher returns for you, and maybe your children.

Our premium app, while easy-to-use, will provide flexibility to include additional revenue sources, like a rental property, for a specific number of years and more granular expenses, like your mortgage, that may end relatively soon. This premium app also allows married federal employees to better plan their retirements. It also allows more flexibility on social security start dates and specific state income tax rates. And finally, it provides much more visibility into the probability of running out of funds in all of the 25-year S&P 500 scenarios since 1928.

Free Basic App

Inputs are easy, and stay on your iPhone or iPad, we do not collect this information!

First input your expected salary at time of retirement. Second input your estimated expenses relative to your salary. Third, enter your expected TSP and/or 401K amounts as of your retirement date. Fourth enter your years of federal service and your pension multiplier. If you retire at 62, you get a 10% kicker! Lastly, enter your social security estimate based on starting at age 62, 67, or 70.

This Simulation screen helps retirees evaluate how risky a S&P 500 strategy might be for them. Since retirees will often need to use their TSP each year to pay retirement expenses, the sequence of S&P 500 returns matters! That is, you hope you have a few good years right off the bat when you retire! The good news is that the larger the TSP balance, the more volatility in returns you can survive.

This basic version shows how long your TSP would last in a depression type S&P scenario and it also shows how your TSP balance under the best 25-year scenario in past 100 years.

This Retirement Summary page starts off with an estimate of your annual expenses in retirement. Then we deduct Social Security payments, after-tax, and also your Pension Benefit, after-tax, to see what net cash, after-tax, you will need from your TSP to cover the remaining expenses.

We then estimate what a TSP annuity would cost to cover that amount and see if your TSP is large enough to buy the annuity. If so, you are in great shape! If not, you might want to see how a more risky, but higher return, strategy might work using historical S&P 500 returns.

Coming Soon ... Premium Version

Soon you will be able to upgrade to our premium version for more adjustable inputs and retirement simulations for all periods, see sample screenshots under development.

The Premium Version provides more details, like certain expenses and income sources for each period of your retirement. In the case below, there are five unique periods, P1 to P5 during your 25-year retirement and you can see the unique expenses, and income, for each.

The screenshot below shows the expenses needed for Period 1 (P1) that lasts five years. Then it calculates the TSP/401K sales needed to generate your net post-tax needs to meet your expected expenses based on our apps estimate of your federal and state income tax rate.

First you select your expected number of years your retirement resources must last. Then input your estimated TSP/401K balance at retirement and your expected high-three average salary. Then select your state income tax rate.

After that you can enter specific expenses, like a mortgage payment, that may end during retirement. You can also enter specific pension and social security info. And finally you can add up to two additional revenue streams, like rental property or dividends.

Since a 25-year retirement length was selected, our app calculates that you have enough money to successfully retire in 52 of the 72 historical 25-year periods since 1928, assuming you earned the actual S&P 500 return for each of those 25 years.

In fact, one of the new features we are developing will show you your TSP/401k balance at the end of your retirement for each of the 25-year periods, so you would have an estimate of what might be left over for your children.

Tony Newell

CoFounder / Developer

Tonynewell4411@gmail.com

www.linkedin.com/in/tonyn44

Tony is a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame studying finance. He likes to play golf whenever he can, and understandably is a huge Fighting Irish football fan. He is actively searching for internships for summer 2025.

Inspiration

With my father – a federal government employee – approaching retirement, he was interested in learning more about the retirement finances. He had learned through classes that a general rule of thumb was that retirees should plan to pull ~4% out of their thrift savings plan each year. However, we realized that that is assuming average returns of 11% each year. While this is a good estimation, we wanted a more in depth understanding of possible returns. Through research, we learned that sequences of returns had a major effect on people's ability to retire. Therefore, we created this app with the purpose of helping federal employees understand how this may effect their finances.

About