About Downshift
Retirement planning, without the noise.
Downshift helps people approaching or living in retirement see their finances clearly and explore their next decision — with free tools that do real math, show their assumptions, and let you think. And when you want advice on your own situation, it introduces you to a specialist who fits. It exists because the transition from earning money to living on it is full of one-time decisions, and most of what surrounds those decisions online is either a sales funnel or a firehose.
Free
Complete results without an account
Labeled
Every estimate shows its assumptions
Sourced
IRS, SSA, and CMS figures, year-labeled
When you want advice
Tools first. A specialist when you're ready.
The calculators, the plan builder, and the guides are for understanding — they show what a decision looks like in numbers, and they are not individualized advice. When you want advice for your own situation, Downshift introduces you to a specialist who fits the question: financial advisors, retirement planners, CPAs and tax professionals, estate planning attorneys, and Medicare and insurance specialists.
You tell us what you're working through and how to reach you; we match your request with a specialist and they get in touch. If you built a plan here, you can send it along so they start from your numbers. Nothing is required afterward, and you decide whether to work with them.
Talk to a specialistWho it's for
Built for the years around retirement
Downshift is for people who value clarity and legibility over jargon — including anyone who has never felt comfortable with financial terminology. In practice, that looks like:
Five to ten years out
You want to know whether the current pace works and which yearly decisions — contributions, Roth vs. traditional — are worth attention.
Within five years of retiring
Claiming ages, conversion windows, healthcare before Medicare, and turning a nest egg into a monthly paycheck are all landing at once.
Already retired
You're pacing withdrawals, planning for required distributions, and trying to keep Medicare premiums from surprising you.
Helping a parent or partner
You're the one with the spreadsheet, and you want tools that show their work so you can talk it through together.
How we think about planning
Three principles behind every tool
Principle 1
Clarity beats optimization
A plan you understand and can follow outperforms a perfect plan you don't.
What it means for you: Results show three or four numbers that matter first — expected income, planned spending, what savings must cover — and keep the rest one click away.
Principle 2
The big decisions matter most
When you retire, when you claim Social Security, how much you spend, and where your accounts sit tax-wise move the needle far more than fund selection.
What it means for you: The scenario lab lets you test exactly those levers side by side, with a plain summary of what changed.
Principle 3
Calm is a feature
Fear sells products and makes bad plans. Nothing here is designed to alarm you into acting.
What it means for you: You'll see ranges across many market scenarios instead of a single score, and language like "in this scenario" instead of "on track."
How it's made
Built, sourced, reviewed, corrected
The math and the design are kept apart on purpose: formulas live in tested code, and every page shows where its numbers come from.
How the calculators are built
Every calculator runs on standard, documented financial formulas — amortization, compound growth, bracket-by-bracket tax math, the SSA's published reduction and delayed-credit factors, the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table. The formulas live in tested code, separate from the interface, with automated tests covering the math including edge cases like zero and out-of-range inputs. No black-box scores, no false precision, and no buried assumptions: each calculator lists its methodology, its simplifications, and a last-reviewed date on the page.
Where the numbers come from
Tax figures come from IRS revenue procedures for the labeled tax year (2026 figures from Rev. Proc. 2025-32). Social Security rules and wage-base figures come from the Social Security Administration. Medicare premiums and IRMAA tiers come from CMS announcements. Long-term-care costs use the CareScout (Genworth) Cost of Care Survey national medians, labeled by survey year. State income-tax entries are labeled with their data year and marked when simplified.
How guides and articles are written
Guides and articles are written to be readable without talking down, checked against primary sources (IRS, SSA, and CMS publications), and updated when the underlying rules change. We name uncertainty where it exists, present trade-offs rather than verdicts, and never publish content whose job is to scare you toward a product.
How often information is reviewed — and corrected
Annual figures — brackets, contribution limits, wage bases, Medicare premiums — are reviewed each fall and winter when the IRS, SSA, and CMS publish updates, and the affected calculators' last-reviewed dates change when we do. If you spot something stale or wrong, tell us; corrections ship fast.
How the site is funded
Free to you. Paid for by specialists, not by you.
Every calculator, the plan builder, the guides, and the articles are free, and the site carries no advertising. Downshift asks for an email address only when you request something that needs one — a guide, emailed results, occasional updates, or an introduction to a specialist — and never for account numbers, Social Security numbers, or passwords.
Downshift earns money one way: when you ask to be connected with a specialist and we make the introduction, that specialist pays Downshift a referral fee. You pay Downshift nothing, and no product on this site is recommended, promoted, or sold for a fee. The specialists we introduce are separate businesses responsible for their own advice, licensing, and pricing — Downshift is an educational publisher and an introduction service, not an advisory, accounting, insurance, or law firm.
Full details are in the disclosures and privacy policy.
See your own numbers laid out clearly.
Ten to fifteen minutes, no account, and every answer can be changed later.