Terms of Use

1. Who this agreement is between

The Retirement Scenario Modeler is operated by Chris Savage, an individual doing business in the State of Georgia, referred to in these terms as "we", "us" or "the operator". "You" is whoever is using the site.

"The site" means everything published at retirementmodeler.com, including the retirement calculator, the blog, the videos and the written explanations, together with the optional account and cloud sync service.

Using the site means accepting these terms. If you do not accept them, the remedy is simple and costs you nothing: close the page and do not use it. If you are using the site on behalf of an organization, you are confirming you are allowed to accept these terms for it.

You need to be at least 18 years old to create an account. The tax rules the model implements are United States federal rules, so the site is built for people planning a US retirement. You are welcome to use it from anywhere, but the numbers will be wrong for a tax system it does not model.

2. This is not financial, tax or legal advice

Nothing on this site is financial advice, investment advice, tax advice, legal advice, accounting advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. That applies to every part of the site: the calculator and everything it displays, the blog, the videos, and every other word here.

The operator is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, certified financial planner, certified public accountant, enrolled agent, attorney or insurance agent, and is not licensed in any of those capacities in Georgia or anywhere else. Using this site does not create an advisory relationship, a fiduciary duty, a client relationship or a duty of care of any kind.

The site does not know your full financial position, your health, your employment, your state tax situation, your estate plan or your risk tolerance, and it never asks. It cannot evaluate whether any course of action suits you, because it has no way of knowing who you are.

Before you act on anything you see here, talk to a qualified professional who is accountable to you: a fee-only financial planner, a CPA or enrolled agent for tax questions, an attorney for estate and legal questions. Retirement decisions are often irreversible, and the cost of getting one checked is small next to the cost of getting it wrong.

3. What the projections actually are

The calculator runs one deterministic model forward, year by year, from the numbers you enter. Change an input and every figure changes with it. Nothing here is measured, verified or reported by a custodian, and no figure is checked against your real accounts.

The model simplifies in ways that are documented and are worth knowing about:

• Returns are an assumption you choose, applied uniformly. Real markets do not deliver a steady rate, and past performance does not predict future results. Where the app randomises that rate to show a range of outcomes, that is a model of uncertainty, not a forecast of it.
• Tax treatment is simplified. The model works from rates you supply rather than from real tax brackets, and a number of real taxes, surcharges and adjustments are not modelled at all. Which ones is documented on How It Works and changes as the app does.
• Contribution limits, RMD ages and Social Security rules change. The figures built into the app reflect the rules as understood when that part of it was written. Congress and the IRS revise them, and the app may lag.
• Social Security is whatever you type in. The app does not connect to the Social Security Administration and cannot verify a benefit estimate, a claiming strategy or a spousal or survivor entitlement.
• Nothing models your actual plan documents. Whether your employer plan permits a partial withdrawal, an in-service distribution or a rollover is a question only your plan administrator can answer.

The full list of assumptions and simplifications is published at How It Works and is part of what you are agreeing you have had the chance to read.

4. Your data, and who is responsible for keeping it

The free app

Everything you enter in the free app is stored by your own browser, on your own device, in local storage. It is not transmitted to us and we cannot see it, read it, restore it or recover it.

That means you are the backup. Clearing your browsing data, browsing privately, switching browsers, switching devices, or a browser deciding on its own to evict storage will take your plan with it. None of that is something we can undo. Export anything you would be upset to lose.

Cloud sync, if you subscribe to it

A paid subscription stores a copy of the same figures on our servers so they follow you between devices. We take reasonable care with it, but cloud sync is a convenience feature and not a backup service, an archive or a system of record. Keep your own copy of anything that matters.

What is collected, what is not, and how long anything is kept is set out in the Privacy Policy.

What not to type in

The planner never needs identifying financial details. Balances and nicknames are enough. Do not enter account numbers, Social Security numbers, passwords, card numbers or login credentials for any financial institution. There is no field that asks for them and no feature that uses them.

5. Accounts

An account is optional and exists only to enable cloud sync. Every planning feature works without one.

• Give an email address you actually control. It is how we verify the account and how we would reach you about it.
• You are responsible for your password and for anything done through your account. Tell us promptly at crsavage0630@gmail.com if you think someone else has access to it.
• One account per person. Do not share credentials or resell access.
• You can delete your account from the account page at any time. Deleting it removes your stored snapshot; the copy in your own browser is yours and stays where it is.

6. Subscriptions, trials and refunds

When paid plans are switched on, a subscription buys cloud sync and nothing else. It does not unlock a projection, a tab or a calculation. The planning features are free and are intended to stay that way.

• Billing runs through Stripe. Card details go to Stripe and are never stored on our servers. Stripe's own terms and privacy policy cover that part of the transaction.
• Trials. A subscription may start with a free trial. Unless you cancel before it ends, it converts to a paid subscription automatically at the price shown when you signed up.
• Renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically, monthly or annually, until cancelled. Cancelling stops the next renewal; it does not shorten the period you have already paid for.
• Refunds. Payments are generally non-refundable, including for partial periods, except where the law of your state says otherwise. If something went genuinely wrong, write to crsavage0630@gmail.com and it will be dealt with fairly.
• Price changes. We may change prices. A change takes effect at your next renewal and never mid-period, and you will be told before it happens.
• Failed payments. A subscription that falls behind keeps working for a short grace period while the payment is retried. If it is not resolved, the subscription lapses.
• After a subscription ends. Your local data is untouched and the app keeps working. Your stored cloud snapshot stays readable and exportable for 90 days, after which it is deleted.
• Early access is honoured permanently. Accounts created while paid plans were switched off keep cloud sync free for the life of the account. That promise was made in writing at signup and paid plans launching does not revoke it.

7. Acceptable use

Use the site for your own retirement planning. Do not:

• break, probe or work around authentication, rate limits, entitlement checks or anyone else's account;
• scrape or automate the site at a volume that degrades it for other people;
• resell, rebrand or redistribute the app or its output as a service of your own;
• present output from this site to someone else as professional advice, or as a projection prepared by a licensed adviser;
• upload anything unlawful, or use the site for anything unlawful.

You are welcome to use screenshots and figures in your own writing with a link back, and to quote the blog with attribution.

8. The site is provided as is

The site is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory. To the fullest extent permitted by law we disclaim all warranties, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy and quiet enjoyment.

We do not warrant that the site will be available, uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, that its calculations are free of defects, or that its treatment of any tax rule is correct or current. Software has bugs, and a model of the future is wrong in ways nobody has found yet.

We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the site, including the account and cloud sync service, at any time. If the hosted site goes away, the free app is a browser application and whatever copy your browser already holds keeps working offline for as long as that browser does.

9. Limitation of liability

You use this site at your own risk, and you are solely responsible for every financial decision you make. That includes when to retire, how much to save, how much to spend, which accounts to draw from, when to claim Social Security, and everything else the site might inform.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any lost profits, lost savings, investment losses, tax liabilities, penalties, lost data or lost business opportunities, arising out of or connected with your use of the site or your reliance on anything it produced. This applies whether the claim is brought in contract, warranty, tort, strict liability or any other theory, and whether or not we were told such damages were possible.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator's total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the site is limited to the greater of the amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or fifty US dollars. If you have never paid us anything, which is true of the free app, that number is fifty dollars.

Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation of certain damages. Where that is the case, the exclusions and limits above apply to you only as far as that state's law permits, and nothing here limits liability for fraud or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

10. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold the operator harmless from any claim, demand, loss, liability or expense, including reasonable legal fees, brought by a third party and arising from your use of the site, your breach of these terms, or advice or figures you passed on to someone else.

11. Third-party services and links

Parts of the site are run by other companies: hosting, the API, payment processing, optional sign-in, and analytics where a visitor has consented to it. Each of those is governed by its own terms and privacy policy, and an outage or a failure on their side is not something we control.

Links to outside pages, including to IRS publications, are offered for reference. We do not control them and do not endorse them, and a link is not a guarantee that what is on the other end is accurate or still current.

12. Intellectual property

The site's code, text, design, charts, videos and brand belong to the operator and are protected by copyright. These terms give you permission to use the site, not ownership of any part of it.

The figures you enter and the projections built from them are yours. Use them however you like for your own planning, including printing, exporting and sharing them.

13. Suspension and termination

You can stop using the site at any time, and you can delete your account from the account page. We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches these terms, that is being used to attack the service, or where the law requires it. If we terminate an account that is paid up and has not breached these terms, we will refund the unused part of the current period.

Sections 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 15 survive termination, which is to say the disclaimers and the limits on liability keep applying to whatever happened while you were using the site.

14. Changes to these terms

These terms may change as the site does. The current version always lives at retirementmodeler.com/terms/ and carries the date it took effect. For a change that materially affects your rights we will give notice in the app or by email to account holders before it takes effect. Continuing to use the site after that is acceptance of the new version. If you do not accept it, stop using the site and cancel any subscription.

15. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, without regard to its conflict of law rules. You and the operator agree that any dispute that cannot be resolved informally will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Georgia, and both of us consent to the jurisdiction of those courts.

Talk to us first. Before filing anything, email crsavage0630@gmail.com describing the problem and what you would like done about it. Almost everything can be sorted out that way, and we will make a genuine effort to.

Nothing in this section takes away a right you have under the consumer protection law of the state where you live, including the right to bring a claim in small claims court.

16. Everything else

• Severability. If a court finds one provision unenforceable, the rest stays in force and that provision is narrowed to what is enforceable.
• No waiver. Not enforcing something once does not waive the right to enforce it later.
• Entire agreement. These terms, plus any subscription terms shown at checkout, are the whole agreement between us about the site.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours if the site changes hands, and your rights travel with it.

17. Contact

Questions, complaints and legal notices all go to the same place: crsavage0630@gmail.com. It is read by a person.

Effective September 20, 2026. Operated by Chris Savage, Georgia, USA.