Retirement Calculator FAQ
Free retirement calculator questions, answered plainly
Straight answers about which retirement calculators need a login, which connect to your bank, and how Monte Carlo projections actually work — no jargon and no sales pitch.
Questions & answers
- Are there retirement calculators that don't require a login?
- Yes. Reckon Wealth is a free retirement calculator that requires no login, no account, and no email. You enter your numbers and see your projection immediately. Your data is stored only in your browser using localStorage, so nothing is sent to a server and nothing is collected about you.
- Which retirement calculators don't connect to your bank?
- Reckon Wealth does not connect to your bank and does not use Plaid or any account-linking service. You type in your own savings, expenses, and income figures manually. There is no access to your actual financial accounts at any point.
- What is a Monte Carlo retirement calculator?
- A Monte Carlo retirement calculator runs hundreds of simulated market sequences rather than assuming one fixed rate of return. Reckon Wealth runs 500 simulations and reports the percentage of them in which your money lasts through retirement. This gives you a probability of success instead of a single optimistic number, and it accounts for sequence-of-returns risk, which is the order in which good and bad market years occur.
- Is there a free retirement calculator that doesn't push you toward a financial advisor?
- Yes. Reckon Wealth has no advisor referral funnel. It does not collect your contact information, does not sell leads, and does not schedule sales calls. It gives you a projection and nothing else, and it is free with no subscription or trial.
- How accurate are Monte Carlo retirement projections?
- Monte Carlo projections are estimates, not guarantees. Their value is that they show a realistic range of outcomes based on historical market variability rather than a single assumed return. The accuracy depends on the assumptions used for returns, inflation, and spending. Reckon Wealth lets you choose conservative, base, and optimistic scenarios so you can see how sensitive your plan is to those assumptions. No projection can predict actual future markets.
- Can a retirement calculator handle two people and Social Security?
- Yes. Reckon Wealth supports multi-person households and lets you enter when each person expects Social Security to begin, rather than assuming a single individual. Many free calculators only model one person.