Fidelity Planning & Guidance Center review
A free planner with tax, Social Security, withdrawal and what-if analysis.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Fidelity Planning & Guidance Center gives Fidelity customers and workplace-plan participants a free way to assess retirement readiness and plan other financial goals. It considers savings, future contributions, income sources, expenses, taxes, Social Security and investment assumptions to estimate potential retirement income. Users can also track multiple independent goals. Its breadth makes it relevant to people who want to examine retirement alongside other priorities, rather than focus on a single savings target.
The planner’s analysis spans income projections, savings growth, withdrawal and income strategies, asset mixes, and hypothetical what-if scenarios. It estimates federal, state and local taxes across income and account types, and includes Social Security benefit estimates and claiming strategies. These are planning estimates: Fidelity says plans are informational and hypothetical, and tax estimates do not calculate actual tax liabilities. That distinction matters for anyone who needs tax preparation or definitive projections rather than a planning model.
Generating a plan has no fee, and the published plan details list retirement and other financial-goal planning plus hypothetical analysis. Fidelity accounts, workplace savings plans and external financial institution accounts can be brought into the planning experience; external aggregation is through Full View and is read-only. Manually entered accounts do not automatically update. The planner is therefore a fit for Fidelity customers who want connected, broad planning at no plan-generation cost, while people seeking automatically refreshed manual entries or tax-liability calculations should look elsewhere. Investment expenses and trading or transaction fees may still apply.
Fidelity Planning & Guidance Center pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Models retirement income, savings growth and withdrawal strategies
- Estimates federal, state and local taxes and Social Security benefits
- Connects Fidelity and external accounts through Full View
- Where it doesn't
- Plans are informational and hypothetical, not actual tax calculations
- External account data is read-only; manually entered accounts do not update
- Investment expenses and trading or transaction fees may still apply
Fidelity Planning & Guidance Center fact sheet, pricing and score →
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