The Complete Retirement Planner review
A one-time Excel planner for year-by-year retirement, tax, and Social Security modeling.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
The Complete Retirement Planner is downloadable Microsoft Excel software for households planning before or during retirement. It builds year-by-year projections from user-entered financial information, covering income, expenses, savings, taxes, and withdrawals. Its scope suits people who want to examine how retirement decisions interact over time, including couples with multiple income sources and households weighing Social Security timing, healthcare costs, and tax outcomes.
The 2026 plan costs $89.99 as a one-time purchase and includes the downloadable Excel tool. It requires paid Microsoft Excel 2016 or later and runs on Windows and macOS. This is a focused purchase rather than a subscription-style service: the planner is stored locally, and Microsoft Excel is its central platform requirement. Households already working in Excel may find that format a natural fit; anyone without the required software should account for that prerequisite before buying.
Planning depth is the main reason to consider it. Features include Social Security claiming, spousal and survivor benefits, cost-of-living adjustments, automatic retirement savings distributions, required minimum distribution calculations, federal and state tax estimates, and a Roth conversion calculator. It also models Medicare, IRMAA, long-term care, mortgages, property taxes, inflation, one-time events, and sequence-of-returns scenarios. Because the projections rely on user-entered information and there is no account sync, it is better suited to people comfortable maintaining their own inputs than those seeking automatically connected accounts. Choose it for detailed, spreadsheet-based scenario planning at a one-time price; look elsewhere if Excel is not a fit or account syncing is essential.
The Complete Retirement Planner pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Projects income, expenses, savings, taxes, and distributions year by year
- Models Social Security, RMDs, Roth conversions, Medicare, and healthcare costs
- Supports what-if scenarios and sequence-of-returns testing
- Where it doesn't
- Requires paid Microsoft Excel 2016 or later
- Uses user-entered financial information rather than account syncing
- Available as a downloadable Excel tool, not a cloud-based planner
The Complete Retirement Planner fact sheet, pricing and score →
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