About

Why it exists

I (LB) spent years as a software developer. One morning in 2026, I learned that I was one of thousands of people being let go in the latest round of layoffs at a company I'd been with for over a decade. I'd always received solid performance reviews at work, but I still knew that getting laid off at any time is a real possibility, and I'd been planning for it financially as best I could.

To see whether that plan could work, I started with spreadsheets early in my career, when I still had zero savings, and later moved on to more advanced tools. Even though I was years away from traditional retirement age that morning, the forecasts provided by those tools said I would probably be fine financially. Not certainly. Probably, with a number attached. That turns out to be a very different thing to carry around than a vague sense of dread, and it is the reason this exists: to give other people the same thing, without a subscription, without an account, and without handing their finances to anyone.

From here on, this page says "we", because two other collaborators have since joined this effort. We're a small group doing this as a passion project, not a company.

The idea

Most retirement planners answer a narrower question than the one people actually ask. They want to know whether you will hit a number. The more useful question is whether your money lasts under conditions you do not control, and how much that answer moves when markets, taxes, and spending refuse to cooperate.

So the tool does not ask you for an expected rate of return, and it does not draw a single smooth line. It runs your plan against 500 possible futures built from a century of market history, applies real federal and state tax tables year by year, and reports how often things worked out. When that figure is above 90%, the gauge on the Simulations tab turns green. That is a strong result: the plan held up in all but the worst of those 500 futures.

How it is funded

It is not. There are no investors, no advertising, no affiliate deals, and nothing about your data is for sale. Right now it costs very little to run, which is what makes that sustainable.

If it ever does get monetized, we might do so by offering optional extra features.The forecaster that exists today stays free either way.

What it will not do

It will not ask for your bank credentials. It will not aggregate your accounts. It will not put the core forecaster behind a login. Those are deliberate product decisions, not features that have not shipped yet.

Your plans live in your own browser and are not transmitted anywhere. If syncing across devices is ever built, it will be something you opt into, and staying anonymous will remain a fully supported way to use this. The privacy page spells out what is collected, which is ordinary anonymous analytics and nothing you typed.

What it is not

It is not financial advice, and we are not financial advisers. It is a calculator that is honest about being a calculator. The disclaimer covers that properly, and what's modeled and what isn't lists, without hedging, everything the projection leaves out.

Still early

This is a beta. There are gaps, some of them listed on the pages above, and the engine still changes in ways that can move your numbers. When that happens it goes in the changelog rather than passing silently.

Feedback genuinely helps, especially the unflattering kind. If a number looks wrong, if something is confusing, or if the tool cannot express your situation, write to feedback@ForecastYourMoney.com. It all gets read.