Retirement Numbers, Explained by Email

Three kinds of email, and nothing else. First, new guides and calculators as we publish them, with a short note on who each one is for and the question it answers.

Second, the year’s numbers when they change. IRS contribution limits and tax brackets, Medicare Part B premiums and the IRMAA income brackets, the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment: each is announced on its own date, and each can change a decision you have already made. We send the new figures with a line on what they affect, and we keep them all on one page, the 2026 retirement numbers, with sources.

Third, worked examples. A hypothetical couple in their early 60s with $2 million split across a 401(k), a Roth IRA and a brokerage account, a pension offer and a paid-off house: what a Roth conversion does to their tax bill and their Medicare premiums two years later, or what claiming Social Security at 67 instead of 70 costs the surviving spouse. The point is to show the method, so you can run the same steps with your own figures.

People roughly 55 to 80 who are planning to retire, deciding when, or already living on their savings, and who like to understand a decision before they make it. Most readers have a lifetime of savings across several kinds of account, and many work with a CPA or adviser.

It is probably not for you if you want stock tips, market predictions or a model portfolio. We do not write about which shares to buy. We write about the decisions that follow from what you already have: when to claim, what to withdraw, how much to convert, what Medicare will cost and what to leave.

Rob May and Vik Chadha, who founded My Finance Platform. Between them they have started, run and sold companies and invested in more than a hundred others, and they built this site after finding that a straight answer about their own money was harder to get than it should be. You can read more on the about page.

We are not a registered investment adviser, and the newsletter is not personal advice. Most of our readers work with a CPA, planner or attorney. The letter is meant to help you understand the numbers, see the trade-offs, and go into those meetings knowing which questions to ask. We do not sell investments or insurance and take no commissions, so nothing we write depends on the choices you make.

We look for decisions that are large, hard to reverse and badly explained elsewhere. When to claim Social Security is a good example: it is made once, it affects a surviving spouse for decades, and most of what is written about it compares break-even ages for a single person and leaves out the survivor benefit. Roth conversions, the order of withdrawals, a pension buyout offer and the inherited IRA rules fall in the same category.

Rule changes come next. When Congress, the IRS, Social Security or Medicare changes a rule that affects people near or in retirement, we explain what changed, who it affects and what, if anything, to do about it, and we update the guides and calculators that depend on it.

And we answer readers. Many of the guides on the site began as a question someone asked, and if a question comes up more than once it usually becomes a guide or a calculator. You can send one through the contact page, or by replying to any issue.

Every issue follows the same rules as the site: worked examples use hypothetical households with their assumptions stated, figures come from primary sources, and nothing depends on which product you buy.

Every calculator on the site comes with an Excel template you can keep, change and send to your CPA. They are free; we ask for your email address when you download one, and that signs you up for this newsletter so you hear when the figures in it change. A few premium workbooks are planned. The free template collection lists what is available today.