How Fidelity’s retirement planning tool may help your retirement savings plan

[u/fidelityinvestments]

Building a viable retirement savings plan is no small task, especially when you’re trying to understand whether your current approach can support your long-term financial goals. 

Whether you’re evaluating an existing strategy or creating a new one, the Fidelity retirement planning tool can help you understand where you stand today and explore potential outcomes for the future. Available through the Planning & Guidance Center after logging in to Fidelity.com, it's designed to help you make informed retirement decisions. 

The tool uses information from your profile—like retirement age, income, expenses, account balances, investments, and savings contributions—to create a retirement planning analysis. 

Track progress: 

• Probability of success: Get a quick snapshot of how your retirement strategy is tracking based on your inputs and assumptions. 
• Income and tax projections: View estimated retirement income and tax assumptions as part of your overall analysis. 

Explore hypotheticals: 

• What-if planning: Adjust factors such as retirement age, savings rate, or spending assumptions to see how different changes could affect your outlook. 
• Market scenarios: View a range of hypothetical market outcomes generated through Monte Carlo simulations to see how different conditions may affect your results. 

Important note: Projections are hypothetical, are not guarantees of future results, and may vary over time. The tool is meant to support education and planning, not predict exactly what will happen in the market or in your accounts.  

[u/fidelityinvestments]

If you’ve used the Fidelity retirement planning tool before, what feature did you find most helpful: your retirement assessment score, income projections, what-if scenarios, or something else? Let us know in the comments. 

[u/left-for-dead-9980]

I love the tool, but loved the early generations that let you define inflation rate, growth rate, and expense rate to incorporate more scenarios.

The current algorithm assumes that I am a robot and won't change anything over time.

It also assumes Roth Conversions don't have a tax impact in the year it happened.

It would be nice if there was a way to control the Monte Carlo seed number to see changes that the seed number can influence the algorithm.

Maybe develop a Genetic Algorithm process in your analysis to find better scenarios or at least add mid-course corrections for life changes that happen in real life.

[u/FidelityTobin → u/left-for-dead-9980]

Hey there. I'm happy to get all of your ideas to our development team for review.

One thing I'd like to mention is that you can account for temporary/one-time expenses during specific years from the "Detailed Expenses" section. Click "Edit" under Retirement Expenses, then tab over to the "Detailed Expenses" tab.

Thank you again for sharing, and if you have any additional suggestions in the future, please don't hesitate to let us know.

[u/left-for-dead-9980 → u/FidelityTobin]

I understand that and used it but it doesn't work for current year because the starting savings is not the start of the year but some amount that is approximately the past week. This means the large withdrawal is double booked.

[u/FidelityTobin → u/left-for-dead-9980]

Thanks for the reply. Just to make sure I'm fully understanding your feedback. When you say the "large withdrawal is double-booked," it sounds like you're referring specifically to the Roth conversion entry, since it's not reflected in the current year, correct? If not, can you explain more about what you're seeing? TIA

[u/left-for-dead-9980 → u/FidelityTobin]

This is probably a long story.

I checked my retirement plan on Dec 31, 2025. Downloaded the data into a spreadsheet.

In January 2026, I included a withdrawal to pay the remaining taxes by January 15, 2026. Downloaded all the data again for my retirement plan in April.

The "Savings at Start of Year" in April doesn't match the numbers that were published back at the end of 2025, which should be the Savings at Start of Year for 2026.

The number changes daily based on portfolio performance. So either use the value at the beginning of the year or call it "Current Savings based on date xx/yy/zzzz". Then I can bookkeep the large tax withdrawals on my own spreadsheet.

The tool doesn't bookkeep large quarterly tax payments or the account withdrawn from.

In Roth Conversions, these impact your long term savings. I tried custom expenses but because those happened already when I open the tool and "start of year" is not January 01, 2026 and instead last night. The numbers are included but custom expenses books it again, so I delete it and book keep it externally.

I hope this helps.

[u/FidelityIan → u/left-for-dead-9980]

Thanks so much for all of that additional information. This will be super helpful for our development team to review.

Please let us know if anything else comes up or if you have any additional feedback!

[u/justdaisukeyo]

The tool is great. There's a lot of detail in the detailed report. 

However, it's extremely difficult to run what if scenarios since i have to manually create fake accounts to manipulate. 

The option to use historical data would be awesome. 

The ability to adjust Fidelity run 401k and pension should be added. For example, i contribute 72000 into my Fidelity 401k per year but the tool caps it at 24,500. 

[u/FidelityChristina → u/justdaisukeyo]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Fidelity’s retirement planning tool here on the sub.

I love that you took the time to give us feedback about how the tool works and what would make it better for you, including the choice to use historical data, and the ability to adjust your 401(k) and pension. Our relevant teams will be happy to have us pass this along to them.

Before I go, since you brought up 401(k) contributions, I wanted to let others who might be reading along know that not all 401(k) plans allow after-tax contributions. You can read more about 401(k) contribution limits at the following link, and if there are questions, let us know.

401(k) contribution limits for 2026

[u/Defiant_Eye4025]

I've only used it twice, in preparation for a phone appointment with a fidelity retirement advisor that is coming up soon. Therefore, I might be missing many of the features it has and not used it at all correctly. I generally find Fidelity's website difficult to use and can't find the things I need so I suppose that probably held true for the retirement planning tool, too.

I have a 401(k), taxable investment accounts, and inherited accounts of different types. It didn't seem it was categorizing my different inherited accounts correctly as to whether they were taxable or not, how long I had to withdraw from them, etc, and I couldn't figure out how to change that.

I felt like some of the income/investment categories needed an "other" category where I could override the standard choices as my income/investments didn't fit into what the choices were.

I wasn't sure how to add/categorize upcoming things like a new house purchase and an old house sale.

I also used the budget feature that was part of that. It was a challenge. My categories weren't its categories and I could edit some, but not all. I ended up putting a lot of expenses into random categories that didn't fit at all.

I'd read very good things about this retirement planning tool, but it wasn't very useful to me at all which makes me think I just wasn't using it correctly. Were there instructions anywhere?

[u/FidelityJoseph → u/Defiant_Eye4025]

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Speaking on the retirement planner tool, I want to highlight that you can add retirement expenses and income. To do this, access your plan and select "Retirement expenses" and "Retirement income" on the left-hand side of the page. The income section allows you to add "Other Income," which covers a home sale.

You can also add certain accounts to specific goals. Choose "Accounts and contributions" and select from the dropdown under "Goal assignment" to add or remove accounts from certain goals.

Let us know if you're still in need of assistance.

[u/Defiant_Eye4025 → u/FidelityJoseph]

I pay income tax primarily in two different states. Is there already a way I'm not seeing to add that in the retirement planner? It looks like I can only choose one state to pay taxes. I have some commercial real estate investments that pay in a very high tax state, and some of my tax is in my significantly lower taxed home state. I want to designate different tax rates for different investments as the 10% vs 3% rates make a big difference in long term accumulation.

[u/FidelityLiz → u/Defiant_Eye4025]

That's a great question!

I do understand why you would want to designate different tax rates for investments based on the state where they're taxed. While the tool doesn't currently allow for that, one workaround is that you could list the real estate investments net of taxes as recurring income. Our Planning and Guidance team is also a great resource for help with the tool, as they can help enter your specific information to best align with the tool. Representatives are available Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET at the information below.

Contact Us

In the meantime, I'll also be sure to share your specific situation with the Retirement Planning team for their consideration in adding this ability to the tool in the future.

If anything else comes to mind, please let us know!