Built for Your Retirement

7 years in the making, PRIME^™ (Personalized Retirement Income Management Engine) tests whether your savings will last through retirement by running millions of randomized market scenarios. Each scenario uses a different sequence of market returns to see how your portfolio would perform under good years and bad.

For each scenario, PRIME:

1. Starts with your current account balances.
2. Simulates each year of retirement, withdrawing money to cover your spending target.
3. Applies randomized market returns based on your equity allocation.
4. Calculates all the taxes along the way: income tax, capital gains, dividends, and even Social Security taxation.
5. Tracks whether your money runs out before retirement ends.

The success rate is the percentage of scenarios where your money lasted the full retirement period. A higher success rate means your plan is more resilient to bad market conditions.

PRIME doesn't just test a fixed withdrawal plan. It actively searches for the best withdrawal strategy by evaluating different approaches. The core trade-off it optimizes is how aggressively to withdraw from pre-tax and taxable accounts early on (paying some tax now) versus deferring and risking higher taxes later when Required Minimum Distributions kick in.

It balances two objectives:

• Maximizing success rate - making sure your money lasts through retirement.
• Preserving ending wealth - ensuring a safety buffer and leaving money for heirs.

A key strategy that PRIME uses: in years when your income is low (and therefore your tax rate is low), it converts pre-tax money to Roth. You pay a small amount of tax now, but the money grows tax-free in Roth forever. Converted amounts become available penalty-free after 5 years.

This is often the single biggest tax-saving move by filling up 0-20% tax brackets now to avoid 22-32% tax later when RMDs force large withdrawals.

Benefits begin at your configured claiming age (default 67, configurable from 62 to 70). Enter your full benefit at age 67; PRIME automatically adjusts based on claiming age: claiming early reduces benefits (down to 70% at age 62), while delaying increases them (up to 124% at age 70).

Benefits increase annually with a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). Social Security income is partially taxable depending on your total income (something most calculators don't model at all!). Somewhere between 0 and 85% of benefits are taxable based on the numbers. PRIME does this calculation and optimizes around it, because modeling ALL taxation is critical for tax-efficiency.

Modeling even highly conservative social security benefits can dramatically increase success rates (or conersely, increase the amount you can withdraw).

PRIME handles federal and state income taxes, capital gains taxes, Social Security taxation, and dividend taxes. It finds the withdrawal order that minimizes your lifetime tax burden and maximizes your success rate.

• Marginal rate - the tax rate on your next dollar of income. Much higher than your effective rate.
• Effective rate - total taxes divided by total income; what you actually pay as a percentage.
• Standard deduction - the first ~$30,000 (married) or ~$15,000 (single) of income is tax-free at the federal level, and states often have these as well. Using these up is a good way to dramatically save on lifetime taxes.
• Tax bracket inflation - brackets widen each year with inflation (modeled conservatively), so you can withdraw slightly more each year before hitting the next bracket.

Retirement lasts a long time, not just a single year. In the app, you can step through retirement one year at a time in the Retirement Years timeline.

1. Run a simulation for Year 1 to get the optimal withdrawal strategy.
2. Lock and advance to save that year's plan and apply a randomly sampled market return to grow your balances.
3. Your age increases by 1, retirement length decreases by 1, Social Security gets a COLA adjustment, and balances reflect post-withdrawal, post-growth values.
4. Run a new simulation for Year 2 with updated balances. Repeat for as many years as you like.

Stepping through the years is great for understanding your near-term retirement possibilities (don`'t worry, you can always undo this by unlocking prior years). You can also use this feature to come back every year and get your new PRIME-optimized withdrawal strategy for whatever target annual expenses you need next.

After running a simulation, PRIME tells you exactly how much to withdraw from each account. Here is how to execute each type of withdrawal or income source in practice.

Pre-Tax Withdrawal (401k / IRA)

Log into your 401(k) or IRA provider and request a distribution for the amount shown. This will be taxed as ordinary income. PRIME will never suggest withdrawing this before age 60 as there is a 10% penalty for doing so.

Required Minimum Distribution (RMD)

If you are 73 or older (75 for those born 1960+), you are required to withdraw a minimum amount from pre-tax accounts each year. Most custodians can calculate and auto-distribute your RMD. PRIME does the appropriate calculations and includes this in your withdrawal plan automatically.

Roth Conversion Ladder

When PRIME recommends a Roth conversion, it means converting money from your traditional IRA or 401(k) into a Roth IRA. To do this, contact your brokerage or use their online tools to initiate a Roth conversion. You will owe income tax on the converted amount in the year of conversion, but the money then grows tax-free in the Roth. Converted amounts become available for penalty-free withdrawal after 5 years, which is why PRIME plans these conversions well in advance.

Roth (Post-Tax) Withdrawal

Withdraw from your Roth IRA or Roth 401(k) through your brokerage. These withdrawals are completely tax-free (for contributions and qualified earnings). No special steps needed beyond requesting the distribution.

Brokerage (Taxable) Withdrawal

Sell investments in your taxable brokerage account for the amount shown. You will owe capital gains tax on any gains above your cost basis. PRIME assumes that you use the "Average Cost" cost basis when selling which evenly spreads your tax burden across your withdrawals from your brokerage account.

Brokerage Dividends

Dividends are paid automatically by your investments. No action is needed on your part. PRIME accounts for dividends in the plan because they generate taxable income and reduce the amount you need to sell.

Social Security

Benefits are deposited automatically once you have filed with the SSA. No withdrawal action needed. PRIME automatically accounts for the partial taxability of Social Security income when optimizing your other withdrawals.

Roth Conversion Ladder (Matured Funds)

After 5 years, previously converted Roth funds become available for penalty-free withdrawal. PRIME tracks this pipeline automatically. When it tells you to withdraw from the Roth conversion ladder, simply withdraw from your Roth IRA as you would for any other Roth withdrawal.

Excess Funds

Sometimes PRIME's optimal strategy withdraws slightly more than you need in a given year to take advantage of low tax brackets. This excess carries over as cash to the next year and is used before any new withdrawals. Keep it in a savings or money market account.