Overview
Retirement isn't something you plan once—it's something you revisit throughout your life. Every raise, career change, market swing, or change in your goals can affect how much you'll need to save and when you can comfortably retire.
Quicken's Retirement Planner helps turn those unknowns into a plan. Instead of wondering whether you're saving enough, you can project your retirement savings using your own financial information, explore different "what if" scenarios, and see how today's decisions could affect your future.
Whether retirement is decades away or just around the corner, regularly reviewing your plan can help you make more informed financial decisions.
Your Retirement Goals
Saving for retirement is one of the biggest long-term financial goals most people have. But simply contributing to a retirement account doesn't necessarily tell you whether you're on track.
A retirement projection helps answer questions like:
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Am I saving enough?
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Can I afford to retire earlier?
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How much difference would an extra $100 or $500 per month make?
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What happens if I live longer than expected?
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How could inflation affect my purchasing power?
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Will Social Security and my retirement savings be enough to support my lifestyle?
While no projection can predict the future, regularly reviewing your plan can help you make informed decisions today instead of relying on guesswork.
How Quicken Helps
Unlike a standalone retirement calculator, Quicken can use the current balances from the investment accounts you already track to build your starting projection when available. This gives you a more personalized starting point and reduces the amount of information you need to enter manually.
From there, you can customize your assumptions—including retirement age, annual contributions, expected retirement income, living expenses, investment returns, taxes, and inflation—to see how different decisions may affect your future.
As you make changes, your retirement projection updates immediately, making it easy to compare different possibilities before making important financial decisions.
Why Use Quicken Instead of a Retirement Calculator?
Many online retirement calculators provide a one-time estimate based on a handful of numbers you enter.
Quicken's Retirement Planner is different because it's part of your overall financial picture. When you already track your investments in Quicken, the planner can use your current investment balances automatically when available. That means you can spend less time entering information and more time exploring your retirement options.
Because your retirement projection lives alongside the rest of your finances, it's also easier to revisit your plan as your savings, spending, and goals change over time.
Basic vs. Advanced Planning
The Retirement Planner includes two planning modes, allowing you to choose the level of detail that's right for you.
Basic
Basic mode is designed for a quick, high-level retirement projection.
It combines your investments into a single balance and focuses on the essential information needed to estimate your retirement outlook, including:
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Current investments
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Annual contributions
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Retirement age
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Life expectancy
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Expected retirement income
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Annual living expenses
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Investment returns
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Estimated tax rates
This option is ideal if you want a fast estimate without entering additional details.
Advanced
Advanced mode provides a more detailed projection by separating information that can affect your retirement differently over time.
For example, you can:
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Separate taxable and tax-deferred investments
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Track taxable and tax-deferred contributions individually
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Estimate annual increases to your retirement contributions
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Use different investment return assumptions before and during retirement
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Adjust your inflation rate
These additional assumptions can create a projection that more closely reflects your financial situation.
Understanding Your Retirement Projection
The Retirement Planner isn't designed to predict exactly what will happen. Instead, it helps you understand how different assumptions may affect your retirement over time.
Your projection includes:
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Expected Projection — your estimated retirement path based on your assumptions.
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High Estimate — a more optimistic outcome.
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Low Estimate — a more conservative outcome.
Seeing a range of possible outcomes can help you prepare for uncertainty while making decisions with greater confidence.
Model Different Retirement Scenarios
One of the biggest benefits of the Retirement Planner is the ability to test different possibilities before making real-life financial decisions.
For example, you can explore questions like:
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What if I retire at 62 instead of 67?
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What if I increase my retirement contributions?
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What if inflation remains higher than expected?
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What if I spend more—or less—during retirement?
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What happens if my investments earn lower returns?
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What if I decide to delay claiming Social Security?
Each change updates your projection immediately, allowing you to compare different strategies and better understand the tradeoffs involved.
Understanding Inflation
One of the biggest challenges in retirement planning is that prices typically rise over time.
The Retirement Planner includes an adjustable inflation rate so you can estimate how rising costs may affect your future living expenses. Looking at your plan through today's purchasing power can help you better understand whether your projected savings will support the lifestyle you want throughout retirement.
Include Retirement Income
Most retirees don't rely solely on their savings.
The Retirement Planner lets you include expected retirement income—such as Social Security, pensions, or other recurring income—to estimate how much of your annual living expenses may be covered without drawing from your investments.
Including these income sources can provide a more realistic picture of how long your retirement savings may last.
Examples
Saving More After a Raise
Ethan, age 34, recently received a promotion and wants to use part of his raise to strengthen his retirement savings.
He opens the Retirement Planner and increases his annual retirement contribution to see how saving an additional $250 per month could affect his long-term outlook. Seeing how much those extra contributions may grow over the next 30 years helps him feel more confident about increasing his savings today.
Deciding When to Retire
Linda, age 60, hopes to retire within the next few years but isn't sure whether she can comfortably leave work at 63 or should wait until 65.
Using the Retirement Planner, she compares both retirement ages while including her expected Social Security benefits and retirement expenses. The projections help her understand how working a few additional years could affect the longevity of her retirement savings, giving her more confidence in deciding when to retire.
Recovering After a Financial Setback
Marcus, age 47, recently used part of his savings for an unexpected home repair and worries that he's fallen behind on retirement.
He updates his investment balances and explores several scenarios, including increasing his annual retirement contributions and delaying retirement by one year. Instead of assuming he's permanently off track, he discovers there are several ways to improve his long-term outlook and begins adjusting his savings plan.
Planning With a Spouse
Patricia, age 55, and her spouse are beginning to think seriously about retirement. They want to understand whether their combined retirement savings, expected Social Security income, and future living expenses will support the lifestyle they envision.
Using the Retirement Planner, Patricia models several scenarios, including downsizing their home and increasing retirement contributions during their remaining working years. Comparing different possibilities helps them have more productive conversations about when to retire and how much they'll need to save.
Opening the Retirement Planner
When you're ready to explore your retirement outlook:
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Select Planning Tools from the left navigation.
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Open the Retirement Planner tab.
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Choose Basic for a quick projection or Advanced for more detailed planning.
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Review the information in the planner and update any values as needed.
When investment data is available, Quicken automatically uses your current investment balances as the starting point for your projection. Other values begin with default assumptions that you can customize to better reflect your financial situation.
Tips
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Review your retirement projection at least once a year.
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Update your plan after major life events, such as a new job, promotion, inheritance, marriage, or significant change in expenses.
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Adjust one assumption at a time so it's easier to understand how each change affects your projection.
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Revisit your plan whenever your retirement goals change.
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Consider viewing your projection using inflation-adjusted dollars to better understand what your future savings may be worth in today's purchasing power.
Important Notes
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If you already track investment accounts in Quicken, the Retirement Planner can use your current investment balances automatically when available.
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The Retirement Planner is designed to help you explore retirement scenarios and understand how different assumptions may affect your long-term outlook.
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It does not provide investment, tax, or financial advice, and projections should not be considered guarantees of future results.
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Because markets, inflation, taxes, and spending can all change over time, it's a good idea to review your retirement plan regularly and update it as your financial situation evolves.