Run the numbers at the source.

Every retirement plan begins with understanding the relationship between two things: what reliably comes in and what actually goes out.

We begin by identifying predictable income streams—Social Security, pensions, and other dependable sources of income—and comparing them against the household’s expected expenditures. The difference between the two helps establish what the rest of the financial plan needs to accomplish.

That makes understanding your expenses critically important. In our experience, most people underestimate what they actually spend. Not intentionally—it’s simply difficult to account for the dozens of expenses, both large and small, that make up a family’s lifestyle over the course of a year.

That’s why the first resource on this page is a worksheet we developed ourselves. It’s designed to help establish what you spend today, what may change in retirement, and ultimately the amount your retirement plan may need to provide.

Below it, you’ll find calculators and resources published by the agencies that actually administer these programs—Social Security, Medicare, the IRS, and others—organized by the type of planning each supports. We point you to the agency’s own calculator instead of rebuilding it here, because the only benefit estimate worth acting on is the one from the organization that will be writing the check.

These tools can help tell you what a number is … they won’t tell you what to do about it.

That depends on the rest of the plan: the other accounts, the tax bracket, the spouse, the date—and how all of those pieces work together.

That’s where planning begins.

The budget worksheet above is published by Other Side Asset Management as a general organizing aid. It performs arithmetic on figures you enter and does not produce a recommendation, a projection, or a financial plan. Everything else on this page is published and maintained by third parties, in most cases federal agencies. Other Side Asset Management does not control, verify, or endorse their content, and is not connected with or acting on behalf of the U.S. government, the Social Security Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or the federal Medicare program. Program rules, premiums, thresholds and benefit amounts are set by those agencies and change, in most cases annually. Output from any calculator is an estimate based on the assumptions you enter, is not a projection of your result, and is not investment, legal, or tax advice.