How Retirement Calculators Maximize Your Retirement Income

Annuity calculator
No matter what stage you’re at in life, retirement planning calculators help you create a solid future.

Planning for retirement income sure is different from what it seemed to be a few generations ago. Pensions are practically nonexistent now, but employer-sponsored 401(k) and personal IRA options help you create your own. Counting on Social Security to pay the bills isn’t the wisest idea anymore either, but it is still an important component of a well-planned retirement. It’s not really the lack of options, but navigating through all of them, that makes planning difficult. And that’s where different retirement calculators can help.

NewRetirement offers free calculators that you can use at any time, and they all let you make adjustments to personalize your plan. They are not complicated, and you never have to provide any of your private information to take advantage of what they have to offer.

If you haven’t tested any of them so far, here’s what you can expect to find out:

An Annuity Calculator Shows Guaranteed Income Options

It’s been said before, but it’s also worth repeating. Annuities aren’t for everyone. In fact, some retirement financial planners advise against them. But the reality is that an annuity, if you buy the right kind for your situation, can guarantee income for life. And an annuity calculator, according to the Motley Fool, is designed to help you find it.

For just about every problem that can be argued about an annuity, there’s a different type of annuity with options that mitigate it. NewRetirement’s annuity calculator walks you through the steps of determining what you can afford and shows what you’ll get from it, which lets you compare plans.

Set your birth month and year, and then decide whether you want to include a spouse as your joint annuitant. Choose the percentage of survivor benefit, if that applies, and then select when you want the annuity to begin paying out. From there, select how much you want to invest, from $30,000 to $2 million.

As an example, for a 47-year-old female with survivor benefits at 100 percent and an investment of $100,000, you could get a monthly income of $1,034 beginning at age 67. Joint life plus 10-year certain offers $1,028 monthly for your life, the life of your spouse, or for 10 years to heirs if neither spouse survives 10 years after the payout begins.

Taking it a step further, joint life plus return of premium offers a monthly income of $962 for life, and if there is any balance left on the premium that hasn’t been paid out when both spouses die, your heirs will get that back.

A lifetime annuity calculator isn’t just for determining how much to invest and how much you’ll get in income later. It lets you adjust your numbers and options and see in clear terms how those choices affect your annuity. And because you’ll likely have questions, NewRetirement gives you the option of connecting with an annuity expert.

Annuity calculator
Every family is different, so there’s no single right answer to any retirement question.

A Social Security Calculator Helps You Make a Smart Choice

A lot of people think that because Social Security benefits are available early, at around age 62, the sooner retirement comes the better. But what you might not know is how much those benefits change depending on when you decide to take them. And once you decide, that decision is permanent. A Social Security calculator is a handy tool that helps you decide when to stop the clock on paying in and start getting back.

NewRetirement’s Social Security calculator will first ask how much you’ll receive in benefits if you decide to take them early, at 62. If you don’t have that information, you can get it from the Social Security Administration. And if you prefer to estimate your benefits, you can do that here. The calculator will then ask what your benefits will be if you take them at 66. That information is also available from the Social Security website.

You’ll be asked to provide an estimate of monthly retirement expenses and how much you’ll have saved when you retire, whether you plan to work in retirement, and how much you expect to earn. Naturally these numbers won’t be precise, but they help you see more clearly what your outcome could be.

The next page of the calculator reveals your “breakeven” age, which is the point in your life when you’ll come out ahead by delaying your benefits past 62. This is likely the most important bit of information that you’ll get, and what helps you decide when to start collecting. You can begin collecting early, wait until full retirement age, or even delay them to around age 70 for the largest benefit of all.

As with the annuity calculator, you’ll have the option to play around with the numbers a bit. Your first entries might have been more optimistic than you knew, meaning you’ll need to save more and delay benefits longer. Or maybe you’re in better shape than you thought and can take benefits earlier.

A Social Security calculator doesn’t give hard dollars and cents facts that can’t vary. It gives you reasonable estimates so that you can plan better and make that all-important choice at the right time.

Annuity calculator
You can use our calculators anywhere, any time.

The Best Retirement Calculators Pull Everything Together for You

A retirement calculator is the granddaddy of them all. It combines a little of nearly everything, but not in a small way. While you might see estimations as you work your way through the steps of using this calculator, you also have options to expand on what you’ve learned along the way.

As with other calculators, you’ll start off entering information that helps the calculator make estimations for you. You don’t have to disclose anything private, and you can adjust any entry that you make.

One of the biggest questions that this tool answers is how much money you’ll need to retire. Every retirement financial advisor has theories on this, from 80 percent of your pre-retirement income to more or less depending on where you live and the lifestyle that you want to have.

You’ll also learn whether your saving and investing strategies are enough, whether you’ll be able to afford healthcare later, and other important questions that you might, or might not know that you need to consider. This calculator is as useful for someone who is still learning and just starting out as it is for someone with a lot of planning experience who is closing in on retirement.

Our free retirement calculator helps you try out your existing plan, see whether it really works, and then make adjustments if it doesn’t. And if you don’t have a plan, it lets you estimate to learn whether your goals are on track.

More than anything, this calculator is a hardworking instrument that gives you insight into several different aspects of retirement planning. And just when you think that you might get stuck, there are answers. If the answers that you find still aren’t enough, we can help you connect with an expert.

Calculators have always existed to give you information in a simpler and easier way. Maybe it’s figuring out whether you want an annuity and can afford one that gives a good retirement income, or maybe it’s figuring out the best time to take Social Security benefits. And maybe you need a more comprehensive planning tool to sort out the details of saving, investing and learning how much money you’ll really need in retirement.

For whatever your retirement income and planning goal, NewRetirement has a calculator that can help. And perhaps the best part is that you can (and should) use them over and again, making adjustments as your life changes. Planning might not be simple, but it doesn’t have to be overly complicated, either. We have the retirement planning tools that can help you master it on your own.

NewRetirement Planner

Do it yourself retirement planning: easy, comprehensive, reliable

NewRetirement Planner

Take financial wellness into your own hands and do it yourself retirement planning: easy, comprehensive, reliable.

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