Common questions about BucketSavers.

No. BucketSavers is educational software for self-directed research. It does not create an adviser relationship and does not replace a financial planner, tax professional, attorney, accountant, broker, custodian, or fiduciary.

No. Every calculation runs in your browser, there is no account, and nothing you type into a tool is sent anywhere. To keep a plan, save it as a .buk file on your own computer.

Nothing you type into a calculator or the household page. The household you enter is kept in this browser’s local storage, on this device, and is never sent anywhere. Two things on the site do involve another company. The contact form sends the name, email address, and message you type there through Web3Forms, a form-delivery service. Most tool pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts, so Google sees a request for the font files, but never anything you enter. The site runs no analytics.

A .buk file is a BucketSavers plan file. It is plain JSON, which makes it easy to inspect and move between computers. It holds whatever you entered, so treat it like any sensitive financial document.

Yes. Every calculator reads and writes the same household file: the facts the tools share, such as ages, filing status, balances, spending, Social Security, other income, and inflation, plus a section for each tool’s own settings. Saving from one tool keeps the other tools’ sections. Older .buk files saved by a single tool still open and are converted to the household format.

No. Enter your household once on the household page — ages, filing status, balances, spending, Social Security, other income, and rates — and every tool opens with it, each taking the fields it uses. It is kept in this browser’s local storage, on this device only, and is never sent anywhere; another browser or device will not see it. Saving or opening a household .buk file in any tool updates it. To remove it, press Forget this household on that page, or clear this site’s data in your browser. A .buk file still works as before, and it is how you keep a copy you control or move the household to another computer.

It answers two questions. The first is which years are cheap to convert in and how much a year is worth converting: the Roth Conversion Planner finds your cheapest retirement years in a projection with no conversions, prices each slice of a conversion there dollar by dollar, including stretches where Social Security taxation makes a 12% bracket cost 22.2%, and compares that with three possible later rates, one card for each, including a surviving spouse’s. The cards are an upper bound. The second is what a plan does to the whole household: it runs your plan year by year against converting nothing, with required distributions, Social Security taxation, Medicare IRMAA surcharges, a surviving spouse, two flat state rates, and how the tax is paid, and reports lifetime tax and after-tax wealth in today’s dollars. That simulation can disagree with the cards, and a Find the best fixed amount button scans fixed amounts over your plan’s ages. For the room left in each year before required distributions begin, the RMD & IRMAA Horizon has a conversion-window table.

Because they measure different things. A card prices every dollar you convert against the highest rate your projection reaches later with no conversions, even if that rate lasts a single year. Converting shrinks the traditional account, so later withdrawals, required distributions, and the Social Security they make taxable shrink too, and the later rate falls with them: the cards are an upper bound. The simulation runs the whole household, so it counts that, along with Medicare surcharges, the growth given up by savings spent on the tax, and a surviving spouse. At the page’s defaults the cards say up to $98,400 a year; the scan’s best is $35,000 a year if both of you live and $70,000 if one of you dies at 82.

No. The Roth Conversion Planner uses the 2026 federal brackets and standard deduction with the age-65 addition (it assumes a married couple are both 65 or older once you are), runs Social Security through the §86 formula, stacks the gains realized on taxable sales on top of ordinary income, and adds Medicare IRMAA surcharges and two flat state rates. It leaves out the temporary senior deduction, itemized deductions, ACA subsidies, credits, AMT, and NIIT. Other tools, such as the Real Marginal Rate Explorer and the Withdrawal Order Sandbox, also apply the §86 formula and capital-gains stacking, and every tool page says what it leaves out. No tool models state tax beyond the planner’s two flat rates, and none produces a return you could file.

Three do, all with the two-year lookback, in which one year’s income sets the premiums two years later. The Roth Conversion Planner charges the surcharge in its simulation, per person aged 65 or older, counts it as a cost of the plan, and has a plan rule that keeps income under a tier you choose. The Real Marginal Rate Explorer draws the 2026 IRMAA thresholds as cliffs on the marginal-rate curve, and the RMD & IRMAA Horizon shows which tier each year’s income lands in and how much could be converted before the first threshold. The other tools leave it out.

No. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, made the 2017 bracket structure permanent, so the rate increase once scheduled for 2026 did not happen. The 2026 brackets keep the same rates, with thresholds adjusted for inflation in IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32. A view that rates will rise later is an assumption to test, and no tool builds it in.

It is temporary: it applies only from 2025 through 2028 and shrinks as income rises, while most of the tools project decades ahead, so they leave it out rather than let a rule that expires partway through a projection shape the result. The Roth Conversion Planner does include the permanent age-65 addition to the standard deduction ($1,650 each for a married couple in 2026), and it assumes both spouses are 65 or older once you are. What it leaves out is the senior deduction itself: $6,000 each, reduced once income on a joint return passes $150,000. For a married couple who are both 65 or older, that means the income that can be converted at 0% in 2026 through 2028 can be up to $12,000 larger than the planner shows.

From the annual dataset Aswath Damodaran maintains at NYU Stern: S&P 500 total returns, 3-month Treasury bill rates, 10-year Treasury bond returns, and inflation, 1928 through 2025, verified against the dataset’s published cumulative values. Retirement Date Roulette runs on it directly. The 10% growth rate used where no downturn is modeled is the S&P 500’s compound annual total return over those years, and the 3.5% safe rate is a Treasury-bill anchor. The methodology page has the details.

No. It is a starting point for finding the right question. Its rates were re-checked against published sources on September 24, 2026, but state rules change every year, and a single rate cannot show graduated brackets, age and income tests, or exclusions that switch off at a threshold. Confirm any number with your state’s department of revenue or a tax professional before relying on it.

There are no subscriptions, accounts, or paid features: the tools are free, and nothing is sold or recommended. If the site ever carries sponsorships, affiliate links, donations, or paid products, the relationship would be disclosed and would not change any calculator result.