The Complete Retirement Planner (TCRP) - News
TCRP 2025 is now available! This annual update includes the most current tax code changes, 401k/IRA contribution limits, Medicare costs,
and RMD rules, as well as several new features that showcase why TCRP is one of the most comprehensive retirement planning tools available.
The new features for 2025 are detailed in our January blog post, and are included in the complete list of TCRP features below.
A long list of essential retirement planning features not offered by other financial planning tools, along with considerable ease-of-use and unbeatable affordability,
is why TCRP has been nationally recognized as one of the "Best Retirement Planning Tools" by U.S. News & World Report, and recommended by numerous
other highly respected news organizations, financial websites, and blogs.
A recommendation from ChatGPT (after a search for retirement planning software) sums TCRP up nicely:
"The Complete Retirement Planner (TCRP) truly stands out as a powerful tool for anyone serious about planning for retirement.
Its comprehensive features that integrate everything from income distribution strategies to healthcare and tax planning make it a top choice for those
looking for an all-in-one solution. The ability to customize your plan, and stress-test it with different scenarios, can give users a lot of confidence in their
retirement strategy. This tool is highly beneficial for people who want to take a deep dive into retirement planning and adjust their strategy as needed."
Please also see testimonials from actual customers at the bottom of this page.
New Customers - Please continue reading below to see a complete list of the unique features that TCRP has to offer.
Existing Customers - Upgrade to TCRP2025 for only $12.99! At checkout, use Discount Code: TCRP2025, along with your original email address.
Thank You for your continued confidence in The Complete Retirement Planner!
TCRP Gift Cards are also available and are the perfect way to help friends and family to plan for their financial future!
The Complete Retirement Planner
Regardless of your net worth or stage of life, creating a written financial plan is a crucial step in achieving long-term financial security.
Every respected source on financial planning best practices will tell you this, yet, ~80% of households still have no such plan.
That's why The Complete Retirement Planner (TCRP) was created.
TCRP allows anyone to easily create an individualized, comprehensive financial plan for both pre- and post-retirement.
Based on the same financial planning principles used by professional advisers, it provides a detailed year by year roadmap of your financial future.
Clearly see the amount of savings needed for a desired retirement age, the impact of claiming Social Security benefits at different ages,
and a necessary annual savings withdrawal rate during retirement. TCRP solves these riddles for you so that you can plan for retirement with confidence.
How Does It Work?
TCRP asks the essential questions needed to generate a precise, year by year forecast of your actual need - including both expenses and taxes.
Multiple income sources (e.g., wages, pensions, Social Security) can be entered by spouse, by year, and your total income is compared to your total need.
Excess income is saved automatically, or, if needed to pay expenses, non-retirement and retirement savings distributions are calculated by spouse, by year.
The result is a detailed and eye-opening picture of your financial future showing how much you will be able to save before retirement, and how long
your savings will ultimately last during retirement with all income, expenses, taxes, RMD's, and necessary savings withdrawals being accounted for.
Considerable flexibility allows you to try what-if scenarios, plan for one-time events, and make all desired adjustments quickly and easily.
Relying only on your personal information (not generic assumptions), TCRP provides the most individualized and accurate results possible.
For your security, all of your information remains completely within your control. TCRP is a digital download that you save to your computer so that only you
have access to it. For ease of use, it operates using Microsoft Excel, for either PCs or Macs. Please Note - a full (paid) version of Excel (2016 or later) is required.
TCRP will not work with the free online version of Excel, or other Excel "apps" (e.g., Numbers, Google Sheets, Libre Office) as they do not support all Excel functions.
TCRP is updated annually (in January) with any tax code changes and new features, and existing customers may purchase updated versions for only $12.99.
Why Is It Called The "Complete" Retirement Planner?
TCRP is a unique retirement planning tool that incorporates technical and educational features that simply won't be found elsewhere.
• Interview style questions, with explanatory notes, easily guide you through the set-up, providing an unparalleled ease of use.
• Clear educational notes on complex topics (e.g., Medicare costs, tax laws, Social Security benefits) help to inform you.
• Flexibility in entering variable income, expenses, investment returns, savings, and one time events allows for individual needs.
• Critical variables that are often ignored by other planning tools, but have a big impact on results, are accounted for (listed below).
• A high level of clarity and detail in the results provides transparency into how it all works from start to finish, making it truly "complete".
The following combination of features are what set TCRP apart from all other retirement planning tools:
Entries By Spouse (If Married):
• Multiple sources of annual income (e.g., wages, pensions, non-taxable) with an option to apply an inflation adjustment.
• Designated entries for Inherited IRA's.
• Non-Retirement cash, short-term, and long-term invested savings balances, and expected interest/return rates for before and after retirement.
• Retirement savings balances, annual contributions, employer contributions, and expected annual return rates.
• HSA balance, annual contributions, and the age at which you would like HSA distributions to begin.
• Desired retirement age and the age when you would like retirement savings distributions to begin.
• Expected Social Security benefit and desired claiming age (or current benefit if already claimed).
- Spousal benefits (if married), Survivor benefits (if desired), and annual Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA's) are automatically calculated.
- If desired, adjust the annual COLA amounts and/or turn off Spousal benefits and/or try different claiming ages to quickly see the long-term impact!
• If married, a life expectancy age may be entered for either spouse.
- The surviving spouse's Social Security income and Federal tax filing status automatically recalculate as of that age.
- It is important to be aware of the impact these changes may have on the surviving spouse's long-term results.
Entering this information by spouse provides a great deal of flexibility and is essential for accuracy!
Combined Entries and General Features:
• Itemize current and future expenses, and how those amounts may change over different time frames. This determines actual need, by year.
- Eligible HSA expenses are paid directly from HSA savings (if available), starting at each spouse's desired age.
- For greater accuracy, fixed expenses (e.g., mortgage principal/interest, auto/general loans) are not inflation adjusted! This detail is significant.
• Mortgage amount, mortgage term, interest rate, and property taxes for up to three current or future properties.
- Annual tax deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes are calculated automatically.
- Specify if a mortgage will be paid off early, or a property sold, to automatically adjust your total expenses and tax deductions from that year forward.
• Federal taxes on income, taxable distributions, and Social Security (different tax laws) are calculated by year rather than using a single rate for all years/income types.
- An effective rate for State income tax may be entered, along with optional Federal tax deductions for State income/sales tax, charity, and medical costs.
Seeing the complete picture of your tax liability is crucial, as taxes can have a significant impact on how long your savings may last.
• The ability to enter a General inflation rate, and a separate Health Care inflation rate.
- The General rate applies to most expenses, but not to fixed expenses (e.g., mortgage principal/interest, auto loans) to prevent artificially inflating those expenses.
- The Health Care rate applies to designated health care expenses that historically experience higher inflation than core expenses.
No other planning tool does this, and it has a huge effect on results.
• Help with estimating health care costs in retirement, including an automatic alert if you may be affected by IRMAA (possibly causing higher Medicare costs).
• Required Minimum Distributions (RMD's) from retirement savings are calculated automatically, by year, by spouse, using the I.R.S. divisor schedule.
• Distributions from retirement savings are specified by spouse, by year, and are based on actual need, accounting for any expenses not paid by income.
- Each spouse may specify the age to start distributions (starting at age 55) to help with early retirement, or to delay distributions (and the tax liability) up to RMD age.
- All distributions account for the amount needed for expenses and the tax liability on the distribution. This is an essential point that other planning tools ignore.
• Easily model Sequence of Returns Risk by entering varying investment return rates for retirement savings, by year, by spouse.
Most planning tools default to using the same rate of return for every year, which can easily produce unrealistic and misleading results.
• The ability to enter expected/unexpected one-time events (additions or subtractions) that significantly impact retirement savings.
- Positive amounts may be assigned to either spouse's cash or investment savings, with negative amounts being added to expenses in the designated year.
• In any year that net income is greater than expenses a minimum of 25% of the excess is saved (to be conservative) and is added to non-retirement savings.
- If desired, this % may be increased to as much as 95% to help regulate any potential "lost" income. Many other planning tools just ignore excess income! Ouch!
- In any year that RMD's are greater than actual need, 95% of the excess is saved and is added to non-retirement savings.
Why 95% and not 100%? Because it's not reasonable (or advisable) to expect anyone to save every penny of excess income, every year, for decades.
Reliable financial plans should always have a small margin of error built in!
• Order Of Funds Used - Expenses are paid from income first, then from proportional amounts of non-retirement and taxable 401k/IRA savings, and finally,
from Roth 401k/IRA's. Cash equal to 2 years future expenses (minus income for those years) is held in reserve to help maintain liquidity.
Savings last longer, and tax liability is less, than if only one savings type was exhausted at a time (as other tools do!).
• Roth Conversions can easily be entered for either spouse, by year, with the tax liability automatically accounted for.
• Qualified Charitable Donations (QCD's) may be entered, by year, by spouse, directly reducing RMD distributions as well as their corresponding tax liability.
Results:
Spouse Results, Shown By Year:
• Taxable income.
• Non-taxable income.
• Social Security income.
• Non-retirement savings balances and distributions.
• Traditional 401k/IRA savings balances, contributions, distributions, and investment return rates.
• Roth 401k/IRA savings balances, contributions, and distributions, and investment return rates.
• HSA balances and contributions.
Total Combined Results (Single or Married) Shown By Year:
• Gross taxable income.
• Federal/State tax liability.
• Federal tax deductions.
• Income available to pay expenses.
• Total expenses.
• Total amount of excess income and/or excess RMD's that was auto-saved.
• Non-retirement savings balances and distributions.
• Retirement savings balances and distributions.
• 401k/IRA distribution % of total savings (withdrawal rate).
• HSA balances and distributions.
How's that for complete?
See exactly what TCRP looks like, and how easy it is to create your own comprehensive financial plan, on the "View The Planner" page!
There's simply no other retirement planning tool like The Complete Retirement Planner!
Our Mission
Our mission is to provide a comprehensive retirement planning tool that allows anyone to easily create a detailed, thorough, and reliable
financial plan for pre- and/or post-retirement. While no plan can account for every possibility, or accurately predict the future, we believe
that the need-based philosophy and individualized detail incorporated into this planning tool will come as close as possible to that goal.
In addition, TCRP must always remain affordable for everyone and represent an exceptional value. Priced, as it has been for many years, at $89.99,
we are confident that this represents an unparalleled value for a professionally designed retirement planning tool with such advanced capabilities.
Don't let the price fool you. TCRP is not lacking in any way. We do this because we can, to help households across the country to be better prepared financially.
We encourage you to compare the extensive features of TCRP to any other financial planning tool at double, or even triple, the cost.
You can even compare the information this planner provides to financial plans costing thousands of dollars from professional advisers.
We are committed to providing the best possible retirement planning tool, at the best possible price. It's that simple.
With The Complete Retirement Planner, there's no need to be a part of "the 80%" any longer!
Stop guessing, start planning, and retire with confidence!
Click On A Product Below To Purchase:
Testimonials
"I've looked at a lot of different planning tools, and TCRP is definitely the best! Thank You!" J.D., Batavia, IL
"You have provided EXCELLENCE, in both TCRP and in your outstanding customer support!" D.M. Endicott, NY
"What an excellent planning tool! The more I work with it the more I appreciate the built-in functionality and guidance.
And all that for a cost that would not even buy me 30 minutes with a financial planner!" A.B. Kenosha, WI
"TCRP is such a great tool! I am really glad that I found it. It provides important and highly useful information that allows me to
better understand and manage all the components of my retirement plan." M.S., Everett, WA
"Having evaluated many other planning tools offered by the big wealth management firms, I believe that you have the best product out there! Nicely Done." A.L., Napa, CA
"TCRP, and your excellent customer service, is worth far more than $89. Can't thank you enough! Count me as beyond totally satisfied!" R.S., Sterling, VA
"I appreciate the information this planner provides - it has paid for itself today. The great thing is that I can try different iterations and see what works for us.
Very useful tool." D.S., Pensacola, FL
"TCRP has been instrumental in planning for our retirement. You’ve got the best solution out there! I recommend it to anyone who wants to plan for their future." S.C., Gallatin, TN
"This product is fantastic and saves me a ton of aggravation and time!" M.K., Oakland, CA
"TCRP makes modeling different scenarios easy, and is very transparent as to how results are calculated.
Very helpful, and it has relieved a lot of anxiety about retirement. We love it!" J.L. Corona Del Mar, CA
"What a great planning tool. I'm a numbers guy and this just blew me away!" M.P., Austin, TX
"Love TCRP! - So easy to model different scenarios. It's a very powerful tool and worth far more than its cost.
A huge help in decision making, especially to see when I can retire comfortably." P.J., Maple Valley, WA
"TCRP is a great planning tool! You've exceeded my expectations and I'll recommend TCRP to my friends." C.P., San Clemente, CA
"I really love this planner! It’s better than the Quicken and Fidelity planners and I have much more confidence in it." R.E., Huntersville, NC
"This planner is pretty impressive. I like to see cold, hard facts and not educated guessing." D.C., Baldwin, MO
Also mentioned in U.S. News & World Report, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, USA Today, MSN.com, White Coat Investor Blog, Millenial Money, USA News Group,
BestLife Online Magazine, GoBankingRates.com, Lifehacker.com, FitSmall Business.com, StudentLoanHero.com, and the Quicken Loans Blog!
Still not sure? See every page of the planner on the "View The Planner" page.
If you have any questions, please Contact Us. We're always here to help.
Thank You for your interest in The Complete Retirement Planner!