The words, in
plain language.

Retirement planning has jargon. Here's what the terms you'll meet in Retire actually mean, in plain language.

Plans and scenarios

• Plan — the container for everything you enter: accounts, income, expenses, and settings. You have one plan; it holds your real situation.
• Scenario — a complete alternate version of your planning choices (retirement age, spending, withdrawal order, assumptions) run against the same data. Your first scenario is your baseline; others answer "what if?" without disturbing it.
• What-If — the live analysis page where you drag sliders (retirement age, spending, returns) and watch the plan react in real time — a sandbox, as opposed to the saved, named scenarios.

Assumptions and projections

• Assumptions — the rates the future is modeled with: investment returns, inflation, healthcare cost inflation, Social Security cost-of-living adjustments. Set on Settings and per-scenario.
• Projection — the engine's month-by-month simulation of your plan from today to your life-expectancy age. Every chart in the app is a view of it.
• Out-of-money date — the point in the projection where liquid assets are exhausted and income no longer covers spending. Ideally: "never."
• Longevity (life expectancy) age — how long the projection runs. Planning a few years past what you expect is the safer error.
• Glide path — how your investment mix shifts over time, typically from growth-heavy toward conservative as you age.

Tax terms

• Tax-deferred / taxable / tax-free accounts — the three tax buckets: traditional 401(k)/IRA dollars are taxed when withdrawn; brokerage gains are taxed as they're realized; Roth withdrawals are tax-free. Which bucket you spend from first is a real lever on lifetime taxes.
• RMD (required minimum distribution) — the amount the IRS requires you to withdraw from tax-deferred accounts each year starting in your 70s, whether you need the money or not.
• Roth conversion — deliberately moving money from a traditional IRA/401(k) to a Roth, paying tax now at a known rate to avoid tax later — most valuable in low-income years between retirement and RMDs.
• QCD (qualified charitable distribution) — a gift sent directly from your IRA to charity once you're RMD-age. It counts toward the RMD but never appears in your taxable income.
• MAGI (modified adjusted gross income) — the income measure Medicare uses to set your premiums, and the one Roth-conversion planning watches closely.
• IRMAA — the Medicare premium surcharge that kicks in when MAGI crosses set thresholds. It's a cliff, not a slope: one extra dollar of income can cost hundreds in premiums two years later. The thresholds are about twice as high for a couple filing jointly as for a single filer, so a survivor's allowance drops sharply when their spouse dies.
• Effective tax rate — total tax paid divided by total income; a truer picture of your burden than your top bracket.

Risk and withdrawal terms

• Monte Carlo simulation — running your plan through thousands of randomized market histories instead of one average path. The result is your chance of success: the percentage of futures where the money lasts.
• Sequence-of-returns risk — the danger of bad market years landing early in retirement, when withdrawals lock in losses. Two retirees with identical average returns can have very different outcomes depending on the order.
• Drawdown / withdrawal order — the sequence in which accounts are tapped to cover spending once paychecks stop. Configured on Withdrawals & Transfers.
• Withdrawal rate — the share of your portfolio you spend per year. The classic rule-of-thumb "safe" rate is around 4%; the app computes yours.
• Spending pattern — how spending changes across retirement: constant, declining, or the retirement smile (higher in the active early years, lower in the middle, rising again with late-life care costs).
• Guardrails (dynamic spending) — rules that adjust spending automatically when the portfolio does very well or very badly, trading a fixed budget for a much lower chance of running out.