How It Works
A practical workflow for comparing retirement timing and income.
FERSCalc is meant to give near-retirement federal employees a clearer planning view before they rely on official estimates, spreadsheets, or final professional advice.
1. Gather Inputs
Start with the facts you already know.
The calculator is usable with partial information, but it gets stronger as you add salary, retirement dates, Social Security, FEHB, and TSP details.
2. Build Scenarios
Compare tradeoffs instead of chasing one number.
FERSCalc is strongest when you compare retirement dates, household setups, and drawdown assumptions instead of treating the first projection as final truth.
3. Review Output
Interpret results as planning context.
The results are designed to help you understand cash flow, timing sensitivity, and uncertainty, then take sharper questions into your final decision process.
What To Have Ready
- Birth date, service start date, and target retirement date
- Your FERS coverage details, especially if you are under 6C law enforcement, firefighter, or ATC retirement rules
- High-3 salary, current salary, and TSP balances
- Estimated Social Security figures from your statement
- FEHB and Medicare assumptions that matter to your household
What You Get Back
- Monthly benefit timing at retirement, followed by explicitly annual gross income, deductions, taxes, TSP withdrawals, and net cash flow
- Scenario comparison for retirement timing decisions
- Withdrawal-source comparison when more than one mode applies (not shown for scenarios with a spending plan)
- Optional household spending plan: enter a yearly after-tax spending target and the TSP draw is solved to fund it where the balance allows, with every year reported funded or short
- TSP drawdown context, threshold-aware guardrails, longevity indicators, and Monte Carlo results
- Optional historical stress scenarios (Results → Stress) that replay bundled market data on your timeline
- Fixed annual after-retirement TSP in-plan Roth conversion planning
- Shareable scenario links plus printable and exportable summaries
Local-First Workflow
Your scenario values and calculations stay with your browser.
FERSCalc runs in your browser with no account required. Scenario values and calculations stay on your device unless you export them or copy a share link. A fixed allowlist of anonymous usage-event names and visit metadata may be sent, never your inputs or calculated results. See Privacy & Limits for details.
Exports are created in your browser and saved where you choose. Share links are point-in-time snapshots, and saved scenarios do not follow you across devices automatically.
For what is modeled and which assumptions drive the projection, see the Assumptions & Coverage guide.
Use the output to sharpen decisions, not to skip due diligence.
FERSCalc is built to help you ask better questions and compare options more clearly.