Two-minute onboarding
A four-step wizard — about you, accounts, spending, strategies — gets a plan personalized in roughly two minutes. Defaults are sane, every value is editable later, and nothing locks you in.
Retirology 2026 — out now
FIRE planning without the subscription.
Professional-grade retirement analysis as a one-time purchase — not a $20–$40/month rental. Roth conversion ladders, Monte Carlo, ACA optimization, full 51-state tax modeling. Runs on your machine. No accounts. Your numbers stay yours.
macOS · Windows · Linux
$19+ once, never again · No subscription · No accounts · No data collection · Runs offline
What it does
Everything you need to plan a serious retirement.
Most retirement calculators give you a single number. Retirology models the whole arc — accumulation through drawdown — and lets you stress-test the plan against bad markets, tax law, and your own assumptions.
Path to FI
Multi-bucket accumulation modeling — taxable, traditional, Roth, HSA — with per-account growth rates, employer match, HSA tax credit, and inflation-adjusted projections. Your FI target is derived from a built-in budget analyzer (category-by-category), so it reflects what you actually spend, not a guessed round number.
Drawdown plan
Year-by-year retirement simulation with income sourcing, MAGI strategy, ACA premium-subsidy optimization, SEPP 72(t), RMDs, Social Security claim ages, and full state + locality income tax for 51 states — across all four federal filing statuses (single, MFJ, head of household, MFS).
Roth conversion ladders
Four ladder modes — fill-the-bracket, ACA-cap, fixed-amount, and target-RMD — with year-by-year schedules showing conversion amounts, taxes paid, and the resulting Roth balance through your modeled retirement horizon.
Monte Carlo
Normal-distribution sampling and historical bootstrap mode pulling from a bundled 1928–2024 dataset (S&P 500, 10-yr Treasury, T-bills, CPI). Get a real success-rate distribution, not a single optimistic line.
Historical stress tests
Replay your plan against the actual sequences from 1929, 1973–74, 2000, 2008, and 2022. See exactly when a real bad market would have broken it — and by how much.
Sankey cash flow
Trace every dollar through retirement — from accounts and Social Security through Roth conversions, taxes, ACA premiums, and spending. See where the money actually goes.
Multi-scenario comparison
Save plans, then put any two side by side — different claim ages, ladder strategies, retirement years, geographies. The optimizer surfaces the meaningful differences automatically.
Alternative to
Most planning tools rent themselves to you. We don't.
If you've been comparing budgeting tools like YNAB or Monarch, paid retirement planners like ProjectionLab, Boldin (formerly NewRetirement), MaxiFi Planner, or Pralana, or you've outgrown the Personal Financial Toolbox spreadsheets — Retirology covers what most of them do (and more), at a one-time price typically less than a single year of any of their subscriptions.
Typical subscription planner
$240–$480 / year, every year
$20–$40/month — paid in perpetuity
- ✗ Account required
- ✗ Your financial data on their servers
- ✗ Lose access if you stop paying
- ✗ Subject to their next price hike
Retirology 2026
One-time$19+ once
$65 suggested — about a single month of an advisor
- ✓ No account, ever
- ✓ Local SQLite — your machine, your data
- ✓ Yours forever, runs offline
- ✓ Free patches; next year's version is optional
Even at the suggested $65 tier, Retirology costs less than two months of a typical subscription planner — and you keep using it after.
Privacy isn't a tagline
Your numbers stay on your machine.
Most retirement tools want you to upload your entire net worth to their servers. Retirology runs the math locally. We have nothing to leak because we have nothing to collect.
Verify it yourself. Run any network monitor (Little Snitch on Mac, your firewall, Wireshark) and confirm: exactly one HTTPS GET to retirology.app/version.json per launch. Nothing else.
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One network request. Ever.
A once-per-launch fetch of retirology.app/version.json to check for updates. It's a static file. No headers about you, no IDs, no telemetry.
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Local SQLite. That's it.
Every account, every scenario, every dollar lives in one file on your disk. Back it up, encrypt it, delete it. Your call.
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No accounts. No login.
There's nothing to sign up for. The app launches and works. The only thing you give us at purchase is an email — for the receipt.
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No analytics, no trackers.
No Google Analytics, no Mixpanel, no Sentry, no chat widget. Not in the app. Not on this website.
Honest pricing
Pick a tier. Same product.
Retirology 2026 is a one-time purchase with a $19 floor — pick the tier that feels fair. There's just one product; the tier you choose is what you pay.
Floor
$19 one-time
The minimum. Same app, same features. Pay what you can — no judgment.
- ✓ All Retirology 2026 features
- ✓ Free patches through 2026
- ✓ Use on all your devices
Suggested
Most pick this$65 one-time
Roughly a single month of a typical advisor subscription — and you keep the software for the year.
- ✓ Everything in Floor
- ✓ Funds continued development
- ✓ Helps cover next year's tax-table updates
Generous
$200 one-time
For folks who want to back the project meaningfully. You can also enter a custom amount in checkout.
- ✓ Everything in Suggested
- ✓ Directly funds future features
- ✓ Our genuine thanks
Mid-year patches (e.g. 2026.1, 2026.2) are free for 2026 customers. When Retirology 2027 ships, existing customers get a discount code — or stay on 2026 indefinitely. It's yours.
Affiliate program
Earn 20% on every sale. No cap.
Because Retirology's price is set by the customer above a $19 floor, there's no per-sale ceiling on what you earn. Most affiliate programs cap your commission at a percentage of a fixed price. Ours scales with whatever the buyer actually pays.
If they pay $19
$3.80
your commission
If they pay $65
$13.00
your commission
If they pay $200
$40.00
your commission
Questions
Things people reasonably want to know.
What's the difference between $19 and $65?
Nothing in the software. The app and every feature are identical regardless of tier. The price you choose is what funds the next release. $19 is the floor; $65 is what we suggest if it's not a stretch; $200 is for folks who want to back the project.
Is this a subscription?
No. You buy a major version (e.g. Retirology 2026) once and own it. Patches that year are free. Next year's version is a separate product — buy it if the new features are worth it, otherwise keep using 2026 forever.
What happens to my data?
Stays on your machine in a single SQLite file. We don't see it, can't read it, and have no way to. See the privacy section or the full privacy statement for the per-OS file paths.
What happens when 2027 ships?
Retirology 2027 is a separate product — refreshed tax tables, new features, and you'd buy it if you want the upgrade. Existing 2026 customers receive a discount code. If you'd rather stay on 2026, your copy keeps working forever; nothing remote is required for it to function.
What if Retirology shuts down?
The app keeps working. There are no servers it depends on — the only network call is the once-per-launch update check, and if that fails the app just continues. Your data lives in a local SQLite file you own, so nothing remote is required for the app to function — and your last paid copy keeps running indefinitely.
What does first launch look like?
macOS: the app is signed and Apple-notarized — you'll see the standard one-time "downloaded from the Internet, are you sure?" prompt the first time you open it. Click Open and you're in. Windows: SmartScreen flags installers without an established reputation — click More info → Run anyway. (An EV signing cert is on the post-launch roadmap.) Linux: chmod +x the AppImage and run it.
Why no free version?
A modest yearly price keeps the project sustainable without ads, accounts, or upsells — which is the whole point. The $19 floor is intentionally low; if it's genuinely out of reach, email retirology.app@gmail.com and we'll work something out.
Ready to run the numbers?
Download once, plan forever. macOS, Windows, Linux. No account needed.