Help Center

RetireOdds is a personal wealth and retirement planning app. It brings your net worth, portfolio holdings, spending, taxes, and liabilities into one dashboard — then runs a Monte Carlo simulation across 1,000 randomized market paths so you can see your real probability of a successful retirement.

Unlike a spreadsheet, every change you make (updating your spending, adding a new account, changing your retirement age) instantly recalculates your chance of success.

Just an email and password. You don't need to link any bank accounts.

To get the most out of RetireOdds:

• Know your approximate annual income and monthly spending
• Have a brokerage CSV from Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, or E*Trade (optional but useful for accurate portfolio tracking)
• Know your current age, target retirement age, and expected life expectancy

Yes. RetireOdds never connects to your bank or brokerage directly — you upload CSVs you export yourself. Your data is stored on a private server and never sold or shared with third parties.

You can export or delete your data at any time from the Profile page.

The onboarding takes about 5 minutes and collects:

• About you — current age, retirement age, life expectancy
• Money in & out — annual income and monthly spending
• Accounts — a prompt to add accounts in Portfolio (you can do this after onboarding)
• Market assumptions — expected return and inflation (defaults work fine to start)

After the wizard, your dashboard shows an initial chance-of-success gauge based on these inputs.

Yes. Go to Profile and click ↻ Restart onboarding at the bottom of the page. All your existing data is preserved — the wizard just walks you through your settings again.

Go to Profile. From there you can set your age, income, spending, retirement age, life expectancy, tax filing status, and state of residence. All fields that drive the simulation live on that page.

• Net worth — total assets (portfolio + cash) minus total liabilities.
• Chance of success — the percentage of 1,000 Monte Carlo simulation paths where your money lasts through your life expectancy.
• Savings rate — (income − spending) / income, expressed as a percentage.
• Years to FI — how many years until your simulated median portfolio hits your FI number (25× annual spending, based on the 4% rule).

The fan chart shows three bands from your Monte Carlo simulation:

• Center line — the median (P50) path: half of simulations do better, half do worse.
• Shaded band — the 10th-to-90th percentile range. The band shows the spread of outcomes — a wide band means more uncertainty.

All values are in today's dollars (inflation-adjusted), so the projection is comparable to your current spending.

The Monte Carlo engine uses a new random seed each time you open the app and each time you click "Re-run simulation." The randomness is by design — it mirrors the unpredictability of real markets. A ±2–3% swing across runs is normal. If you want a stable number, look at the long-run trend as you adjust your inputs.

Go to Portfolio and click + Add account. Give the account a name (e.g. "Fidelity 401k"), choose a type (Taxable, Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, 401k, HSA, Other), and optionally enter a cash balance. The account appears immediately in the sidebar and dashboard totals.

RetireOdds auto-detects and imports holdings from:

• Fidelity — Portfolio Positions export
• Schwab — Positions export
• Vanguard — Holdings export
• E*Trade — Portfolio download

To export from your brokerage: log in → Accounts → Positions → Download/Export CSV. Then drag the file onto the Import button in RetireOdds's Portfolio page.

Click Refresh prices on the Portfolio page to pull the latest market quotes for all your holdings. Prices are fetched from a free market data feed. If a ticker isn't found, the last known price is kept.

Live prices are not automatic — click the button whenever you want to update them.

Not directly from the UI yet — the fastest path is a CSV import. As a workaround, you can create a one-row CSV:

Symbol,Quantity,Last Price
AAPL,10,189.50

Save it as positions.csv and import it. RetireOdds will auto-detect the format.

The donut shows your portfolio split across Stocks, Bonds, and Cash. Bond funds are identified by common ticker patterns (BND, AGG, TLT, etc.). Everything else is counted as equities. Cash is the sum of all account cash balances.

True net worth = total portfolio value (cash + market value of all holdings) − total liabilities (all debt balances).

The Net Worth page shows a stacked bar chart comparing assets and liabilities, and a history chart if you've been using the app for multiple months.

The dashboard KPI shows true net worth (assets minus liabilities). Some charts in the app show investable assets only (portfolio value without subtracting debt), because the simulation models your portfolio separately from fixed debt repayments. Both figures are labeled clearly in context.

RetireOdds supports: Credit Card, Auto Loan, College Loan, Medical Debt, Mortgage, and Other.

For each liability you enter: a name, current balance, interest rate (APR), and monthly payment. These feed directly into your true net worth calculation.

Liabilities reduce your net worth on the dashboard. The monthly payment is not yet automatically deducted from your spending assumption in the simulation — you should include recurring debt payments in your monthly spending figure on the Profile page for the most accurate simulation.

Go to Expenses and use the quick-add row at the top. Fill in:

• Date — defaults to today
• Payee — who you paid
• Category — Rent, Groceries, Dining, etc.
• Currency — USD, THB, or any supported currency
• Amount — positive for expenses, income-type rows are labeled "in"

Press Add or hit Enter to save.

RetireOdds imports expense CSVs from Quicken and Simplifi. The importer looks for standard column headers like Date, Payee, Amount, and Category.

You can also import a generic CSV — as long as it has Date, Payee/Description, and Amount columns, the importer will pick it up.

Each expense row is stored in the currency you entered it in (e.g., Thai Baht ฿ or USD $). When displaying totals, RetireOdds converts everything to your base currency using live exchange rates that refresh roughly 4× per day.

Set your base currency in Profile → Currency.

Yes. In Profile → Income & spending, toggle "Use my tracked expenses for spending". RetireOdds averages your tracked monthly totals and uses that figure as your withdrawal rate in the simulation — instead of the manually entered spending value. Sparse or incomplete months are skipped automatically: any month whose spend is 30% or less of your recent (last-6-month) average is left out, so a partial current month or a thin early import doesn't drag the figure down.

One-off purchases: a single large, non-recurring expense — a car, a deposit, a one-time medical bill — can distort that average. On the Expenses page, click Mark on any transaction (or tick One-off when adding one) to flag it as one-off. One-off items still count once in your totals, but are excluded from the average monthly spend that drives the simulation.

A Sankey diagram that traces your income through taxes, spending, and savings. Each flow is proportional to the dollar amount.

Switch between This year (current working income) and Retirement (simulated withdrawal-based flow) using the toggle at the top.

RetireOdds uses your filing status and state from Profile to estimate federal and state income tax. It applies the standard deduction and the current marginal tax brackets. This is an estimate — it doesn't account for deductions beyond the standard one or investment income differences.

See the full breakdown on the Tax Analytics page.

Monte Carlo simulation runs your retirement plan thousands of times with randomized market returns drawn from your assumptions (expected return + volatility). Each run is a possible "path" your portfolio might take.

The chance of success is the percentage of those paths where your portfolio is still positive when you reach your life expectancy. A 90% chance means 9 out of 10 simulated lifetimes end with money left.

• P10 — the 10th percentile: 90% of simulations ended higher than this. This is the "bad luck" scenario.
• P50 — the median: half of simulations ended higher, half lower. Use this as your baseline.
• P90 — the 90th percentile: 90% of simulations ended lower than this. This is the "good luck" scenario.

From Advanced settings you can choose:

• Monte Carlo — random returns drawn from a log-normal distribution using your expected return and volatility assumptions.
• Historical backtest — replays every US market sequence from 1928 to 2023. More grounded in real history.
• Bootstrap — resampled blocks of real historical returns, preserving short-run correlations while generating many unique sequences.

The biggest levers, roughly in order of impact:

• Reduce monthly spending — lowers the withdrawal rate and increases the FI number you need
• Retire later — more saving years, fewer withdrawal years
• Increase income / savings rate — grows the portfolio faster
• Change withdrawal strategy — flexible strategies like Guyton-Klinger or Vanguard Dynamic Spending can increase success at the same spending level

Use the Assumptions panel on the Chance of Success page to tweak values and re-run instantly.

Go to Advanced to choose from 7 strategies across three goals:

• Basic — Constant Dollar, Percent of Portfolio
• Maximize Spend — Dynamic SWR
• Maximize Longevity — Guyton-Klinger, 95% Rule, CAPE-based, Sensible Withdrawals, Vanguard Dynamic Spending

The chosen strategy affects the simulation across all views — the dashboard gauge, the Chance page, and the projection chart all update.

The estimate applies the 2025 federal brackets and the standard deduction for your filing status. State taxes use a flat rate per state (California 9.3%, New York 6.5%, Texas 0%, etc.).

It is a ballpark estimate. It does not account for itemized deductions, capital gains rates, FICA/payroll taxes, credits, or the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Use it to understand your approximate bracket, not for tax filing.

Your marginal rate is the tax rate on your last dollar of income — the bracket you're currently in. Your effective rate is your actual total tax divided by gross income, which is always lower because the lower brackets apply to the first dollars earned.

• Roth conversion ladder — convert ~$28k/yr in low-income years to fill the 24% bracket and reduce future RMDs.
• Tax-loss harvesting — offset realized gains with losses in your taxable brokerage.
• Asset location — hold bonds in tax-deferred accounts, equities in taxable and Roth.
• Withdrawal sequencing — draw taxable accounts first, then tax-deferred, then Roth.

Toggle each strategy on or off to see the estimated lifetime tax savings added to your plan.

Any change to these profile fields triggers an automatic simulation re-run:

• Current age, retirement age, life expectancy
• Annual income and monthly spending (or "use tracked expenses")
• Expected return, volatility, inflation (on the Chance of Success page)
• Social Security annual benefit and claiming age

Theme, accent color, and currency preference do not affect the simulation.

Use the controls in the top-right of any app page:

• Sun/moon icon — toggle between light and dark mode
• Colored dots — switch between green, teal, and indigo accent colors

Your preference is saved automatically.

Go to Profile → Currency and select your home currency from the dropdown. Exchange rates refresh automatically roughly 4 times per day. All expense totals will convert to your base currency at the current rate.

On the Portfolio page, click the Export CSV button in the Holdings section. This downloads a CSV of all your current positions with symbols, quantities, and prices.

On the Expenses page, click Export CSV. The file includes all logged transactions with date, payee, category, currency, and amount.

No. RetireOdds never asks for your bank login or OAuth credentials. All financial data enters through CSV files that you export from your own brokerage and upload yourself. This means your credentials stay only with your financial institution.