Understand the Numbers, Check the Advice
My Finance Platform publishes free calculators and plain-English guides for people near or in retirement, so you can understand your numbers, see the tradeoffs, and go into meetings with your CPA or adviser prepared. We also write a free newsletter.
Who This Site Is For
We write for people roughly 55 to 80 who are approaching retirement, making the transition, or already drawing income, and who prefer to understand a decision before they make it. Most work with a CPA, planner or attorney; some handle everything themselves. Either way, the aim is the same: know the numbers, know which questions to ask, and decide with full information.
That means the questions that come with a lifetime of savings: when to retire and claim Social Security, how much to withdraw and from which account, RMDs and Roth conversions, Medicare and long-term care, taxes, and what to leave to children, grandchildren and charity. Our calculators, guides and newsletter are free.
Our Mission
To help you understand the numbers behind each retirement decision, see the tradeoffs, and check the advice you get: when to claim Social Security, which account to draw from, how much to convert to Roth, what Medicare will cost, and what to leave. We do it with free calculators, plain-English guides and a free newsletter that keeps you current when the numbers change.
Why We Exist
Retirement decisions interact: a Roth conversion changes Medicare premiums, a claiming age changes the tax on every later withdrawal. Good advisers handle this well, but it is hard to judge their work, or to ask the right questions, without seeing the numbers yourself. We built My Finance Platform so you can.
Our Values
Transparency
No commissions, no sales quotas, and the math shown so you can check it.
Empowerment
Understand your numbers and decide with full information, on your own or with your CPA or adviser.
Security
Calculator figures stay in your browser. We use your email only to send what you ask for, and never sell it.
Innovation
We build calculators that make connected retirement decisions easier to see.
User-Centricity
Everything we build starts with your needs, your goals, your life.
How We Build and Check the Numbers
Every figure that changes by law or by year lives in one place on the site, with its source next to it, and every calculator and guide reads from there.
Tax brackets, contribution limits, Medicare premiums and IRMAA tiers, Social Security figures and reverse mortgage limits are kept in a small set of data tables, each line annotated with the IRS revenue procedure, Social Security announcement, CMS fact sheet or HUD notice it came from. When a figure changes, we change it once, and the calculators, the worked examples in the guides and the Excel templates all move with it, so a guide's figures do not quietly go out of date.
The calculators that do the most arithmetic, among them the Roth conversion, pension, reverse mortgage, estate tax, bond, CD ladder, dividend and inherited IRA calculators, have automated checks that compare their results with hand calculations and with examples published by the IRS, HUD and others. A change that breaks one of those checks does not ship.
Each calculator page also explains its method and the assumptions behind it, and every one comes with an Excel template that uses the same defaults, so you can see every formula and change any assumption.
Where Our Figures Come From
We work from primary sources rather than summaries of them. The main ones, and when they change:
| Figures | Source | Usually published |
|---|---|---|
| Tax brackets, standard deductions, retirement and HSA limits | IRS revenue procedures and notices | October to November |
| Social Security cost-of-living adjustment and taxable maximum | Social Security Administration | October |
| Medicare Part B and Part D premiums, IRMAA tiers | Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services | Autumn |
| Reverse mortgage (HECM) lending limit | HUD mortgagee letter | Late in the year |
| Household debt, savings and spending by age | Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, BLS, BEA | As released |
Each year, as the next year's figures are announced, we update the tables and the retirement numbers page, which collects them in one place. Guides show the date they were last updated under the title. Where a number is an assumption rather than an official figure, such as an investment return, an inflation rate or a loan rate, the page says so, and the calculators and templates let you change it to your own.
How We Write the Guides
- The answer first. Each section opens with the short answer, then the reasoning, so you can stop when you have what you need.
- Worked examples you can check. Examples use hypothetical households, labelled as such, with their income, balances and assumptions stated, so you can redo the arithmetic or swap in your own figures.
- Sources linked in the text. A claim about a rule or a statistic links to the IRS, Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve or the study it came from.
- Questions for your adviser. Major guides end with the questions worth taking to your CPA, planner or attorney, because most decisions here are better made with one.
- Corrections. If you find an error, tell us. We fix it and update the date on the page.
How We Pay for This, and What We Are Not
The calculators, guides and newsletter are free. Some Excel templates ask for an email address, which adds you to the newsletter; you can unsubscribe at any time. We may later offer a paid edition of the newsletter or a few premium templates. We do not take commissions on financial products, and we do not sell your email address.
We are not a registered investment adviser, and nothing on the site is personalized financial, tax or legal advice. The site is built to help you understand the numbers and the tradeoffs, and to make your conversations with the professionals you work with more productive. The disclaimer sets this out in full.
About Our Founders
The people behind My Finance Platform
Co-founder and CEO of Neurometric, which optimizes inference for multi-model AI systems. He built Backupify with Vik before its acquisition by Datto, has made more than a hundred angel investments, and is the author of the book Investing in AI.
Founder and CEO of Scalable Ventures, a venture lab building AI-native B2B software. He co-founded UnifyCX in 2002, growing it to more than 6,000 employees, later co-founded Backupify with Rob, invests as a general partner at Unbridled Ventures, and sits on the board of VentureFirst, an alternative-investment and financial services firm.
Why We Built My Finance Platform
Between us, we have started, run and sold companies, and invested in more than a hundred others. You would think that makes good financial advice easy to find. It doesn't.
After an exit, one of us went looking for an advisor and met the same playbook again and again: an impressive office, leather-bound portfolios, and recommendations that lined up with whatever paid the advisor most. One spent an hour selling whole life insurance. Another pushed proprietary funds with 2% expense ratios. A third wanted to churn the entire portfolio, generating fees for the firm and taxes for the client.
If people who have built companies and read balance sheets for a living struggle to get a straight answer about their own money, how is anyone else supposed to?
The breaking point was a “sophisticated” strategy that would have generated $50,000 in fees while barely moving the returns. That was the moment the idea for this site took shape.
We have spent our careers building software that makes hard problems simpler. Rob runs Neurometric, which works on multi-model AI systems; Vik runs Scalable Ventures, a venture lab building AI-native software. Biased financial advice is a problem we care about personally. Too often the client is treated as a product to sell to, and their financial life is split into whatever pieces earn fees, so nobody looks at the whole picture.
Good advisers exist, and most families near retirement work with a CPA, planner or attorney. The difference between good and bad advice is easier to see when you can follow the numbers yourself.
My Finance Platform is our answer. Today it is free calculators and plain-English guides that help you understand your numbers, check the math and know which questions to ask. The newsletter keeps you current when the figures change and walks through worked examples you can check against your own. No commissions, no products to push, no cookie-cutter portfolios.
Because you should be able to decide with full information, whoever you work with.
Rob May
Co-Founder, My Finance Platform
Vik Chadha
Co-Founder, My Finance Platform
Questions About Us
Who runs My Finance Platform?
Rob May and Vik Chadha, who founded it. Both are entrepreneurs and investors; their backgrounds are on this page. They write the newsletter and are responsible for what the site publishes.
Is My Finance Platform a financial adviser?
No. We are not a registered investment adviser and do not give personalized financial, tax or legal advice. The calculators and guides are educational: they show the numbers and the tradeoffs behind a decision so you can make it yourself or discuss it with your CPA, planner or attorney.
How does the site make money?
At present it does not charge for anything. The calculators, guides, newsletter and templates are free. We may later offer a paid edition of the newsletter or a few premium templates. We do not take commissions on financial products and do not sell email addresses.
How current are the figures?
They are updated each year as the IRS, Social Security, Medicare and HUD publish the next year’s figures, mostly between October and December. Every guide shows the date it was last updated, and the retirement numbers page lists the current figures with their sources.
Do you store the numbers I enter in a calculator?
No. Calculator figures stay in your browser and are not saved to an account. We collect an email address only when you subscribe to the newsletter or download a template, and use it only to send what you asked for.
Why does the site focus on people 55 to 80?
Because that is when the hardest money decisions arrive together and most of them are made once: when to stop work, when to claim Social Security, how to turn savings into income, how much to convert to Roth, which Medicare coverage to choose and how to pass wealth on. General personal finance sites cover budgeting and getting out of debt well. Far fewer explain these decisions with the depth and the worked numbers that a lifetime of savings deserves, so that is what we write.
Can I suggest a calculator or report an error?
Yes, through the contact page. Many guides and calculators began as a reader’s question. If you find an error, we correct it and update the date on the page.
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