FedsRetireWise
Our Basic app is a teaching tool to help Federal employees understand their sources of retirement income to cover expected expenses and a rough estimate of a TSP annuity to cover their retirement expenses.
Our Premium app, coming soon, is a retirement planning calculator with more flexible expense and income inputs as well as additional scenario analyses on possible TSP annuity alternatives, like evaluating S&P 500 scenarios since 1928.
With my father – a federal government employee – approaching retirement, he saw the need for an easy-to-use retirement planning app for federal employees that also had enough assumption flexibilities to capture most revenue and expense items in retirement.
We created a basic free version and are close to launching a premium version with more flexibilities. These apps will allow retirees to play with assumptions and determine whether their TSP is large enough so they can retire wisely or not!
For example, based on your inputs, we calculate the cost of a TSP annuity to cover your net cash needs in retirement and also show you what your TSP would do under all the 25-year S&P return sequences since 1928.
FedsRetireWise 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. Go to Apple app store and search for "RetireWise Basic".
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 RetireWise Basic App
Inputs are easy, and stay on your iPhone or iPad, we do not collect this information!
See Retirement Input screen shot below. 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.
If you click the Enter Detailed Expense on the Retirement Input tab, you can entire your expected retirement expenses as a percentage of your pre-retirement salary. Often retirement advisors recommend a range of 70% to 80% but we also allow a customized percentage too.
You can also enter two specific expenses like a mortgage payment and when it will end and a second expense, possibly tuition expenses, and when it will end too.
See Retirement Input screenshot below. 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 pre-retirement 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.
The Retirement Summary page uses your Retirement Input assumptions and calculates your expected retirement expenses. It then calculates your after-tax social security and pension benefits and estimates how much of your TSP/401k you need to sell to meet your remaining retirement expenses.
In the example, the annual pre-tax TSP withdrawal is $79,285 to cover your remaining after-tax needs each year for P2. Our application estimates your federal/state tax rate which helps us estimate your pre-tax TSP/401k sales.
One key feature of our app is that it estimates the cost of a TSP annuity that would your net cash needs for your retirement. It is sophisticated and includes the cost of the TSP annuity based on current TSP annuity rates and the cash you need to cover expenses.
In the example below, the cost of the TSP annuity for all four periods, over your 25 year retirement, is $944,010 and is more than you have in your TSP, that is, $750,000. If you click the "Try Another Way" tab our app will estimate whether a $750,000 investment in the S&P 500 would generate enough income to cover your expenses.
Our app allows you to click on any of the 25-year periods since 1928 and see if the S&P 500 returns for each year within that 25-year period would have successfully covered your retirement expenses, after including your social security and pension income.
Our app provides you flexibility to observe these 25-year simulation return details in chronological order, from best to worst, and from worst to best. These tabs also show you how much you have left in your TSP at the end or alternatively the year in which you run out!
The Simulation Results tab shows that the $750,000 TSP investment in the S&P 500 would only cover your estimated retirement expenses in 33 out of the 73 periods since 1928.
The example below shows you that if the next 25 year annual returns of the S&P 500 were the same as from 1981 to 2006, you could retire, just barely. The details shows your withdrawal to cover expenses of $109k and a negative S&P 500 return of 9.7% for 1981. By clicking "All 73 Simulations by Period" you get the details of each of the 73 simulations!
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.
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