Retirement math has a way of getting complicated fast. One year you feel comfortably on track; the next, a market drawdown or a new tuition bill leaves you staring at a spreadsheet wondering whether 65 is still realistic. Most online calculators can’t handle that kind of nuance—they give you a single “success” probability and call it a day.
Empower’s Retirement Planner takes a different tack.
Built into the free Empower Personal Dashboard™, the Planner treats your future like the moving target it is. You can drag a slider to see how pushing retirement up—or back—changes the numbers; plug in a second-home purchase or four years of college tuition; and even replay past market crashes to gauge whether your portfolio would have bent or broken. All of it happens on a single screen, updated in real time.
To see whether the tool lives up to its billing, Benzinga gained full access to a sample Dashboard and ran the Retirement Planner through its paces—salary, savings rate, desired spending, and a few “what-if” expenses. What follows is an honest look at where the Planner shines, where it nags, and why it may deserve ten minutes of any investor’s time.
Why the Retirement Planner Stands Out
- Timeline flexibility: Change your desired retirement age with a slider and watch the numbers update instantly.
- Side-by-side scenario testing: Compare early-retirement dreams against your current plan, then layer in big one-off costs to see whether they break—or barely dent—your forecast.
- Recession Simulator: Replay market shocks like the Dot-com bust or 2008 crisis and gauge how your portfolio might have fared.
- Education-cost engine: Pull tuition estimates from thousands of colleges (room and board included) and model various 529-contribution strategies.
- Tax-smart insights: The Planner flags high-fee funds and highlights how tax-loss harvesting or asset-location tweaks could stretch your nest egg.
Getting Started: Five Minutes of Setup
- Enter basics: Birth year, planned retirement age, marital status and state of residence.
- Sync or type in numbers: Use Dashboard data for current savings ($509,942 in our test) or enter figures manually. Add salary, annual savings and desired retirement spending.
- Optional education planner: Add each child’s name and expected freshman year. The Planner pulls cost estimates instantly from thousands of actual college options and builds a 529-savings track.
- Hit “Plan My Retirement.” The Dashboard crunches the numbers and drops you into a live projection (no waiting on email reports).
| Panel | What You See | Why It’s Useful |
| Projected Portfolio Value | Interactive chart showing median and 10th-percentile (bad-case) outcomes every year to age 95. | Quick gut-check on whether you’re on track—or running hot. |
| Retirement Spending Ability | “Projected $5,166/mo vs. Planned $3,750/mo” (in our test). | Confirms surplus or shortfall in today’s dollars. |
| Market Conditions Toggle | Add a new scenario to switch to a recession overlay (Dot-com, 2008, inflation spikes). | Visual stress test: can your plan survive ugly markets? |
| Asset-Location View | Breakout of tax-deferred vs. taxable buckets and Roth balance over time. | Highlights opportunities for more tax-efficient placement. |
| Cash-Flow Table | Year-by-year ledger of savings, spending, Social Security and portfolio drawdowns. | Transparency junkies can audit every line item. |
The default projection assumed a 6.6 % return and 9.9 % volatility for our current allocation. Switching to Empower’s suggested “Personal Strategy® which is available to clients with $100,000 or more” (8.2 % / 14.3 %) added $366 of extra monthly spending power and boosted the median portfolio value by roughly $500,000 at age 93.
Rebalancing & Tax-Efficiency Suggestions
Below the main graph, Empower lists concrete ways to improve outcomes:
| Suggestion | Potential Benefit |
| Shift to lower-cost ETFs & individual stocks | Save $159,000 in fund fees by retirement. |
| Implement tax-loss harvesting | $1,440–$3,230 estimated tax savings this year alone. |
| Adopt the recommended asset mix | Increase projected monthly spending by $366 and raise long-term return potential. |
What We Liked Most
| Feature | Why It Stood Out |
| Granular yet friendly UI | The Planner’s graphs feel approachable—no finance degree required. |
| Real-world event testing | The Recession Simulator moves theory into the tangible (“here’s how 2008 would have hit you”). |
| College-cost module | Auto-fills tuition data from thousands of schools, then folds contributions into your plan. |
| Line-item cash-flow view | Rare transparency for free software; you can trace every yearly inflow/outflow. |
A Few Trade-Offs to Consider
| Consideration | What It Means |
| Advisor upsell | As with the Investment Checkup, Empower nudges you towards a free consultation with a financial advisor. |
| Assumption risk | Projections rely on historical returns; if future markets differ wildly, results will too |
| Manual trading if you stay DIY | The Planner models what to buy/sell, but you’ll execute trades yourself unless you hire Empower. |
Bottom Line: A Robust Retirement Road-Mapping Tool—For Free
After using the Retirement Planner the way a real household might—tweaking retirement ages, adding college costs, and stress-testing against a 2008-style crash—we came away thinking, “This is the kind of software people usually pay for.”
The interface is straightforward, the projections are transparent, and the what-if modules (especially the Recession Simulator) make abstract risks feel tangible.
Yes, the app reminds you that Empower’s advisors can implement the recommended changes for a fee; that’s the business model. But nothing prevents you from printing the allocation pie chart, logging in to their brokerage, and doing the trades themselves. Even if you never upgrade to paid management, the Planner still leaves you with a clearer picture of how savings, spending, taxes, and market swings fit together.
If retirement planning has been living on the back burner—or trapped inside a one-page calculator—this tool is worth a quick test drive.
Ten to fifteen minutes should be enough to surface any glaring gaps and, maybe, a few pleasant surprises about what your future finances can handle. From there, the next move is entirely up to you.
Questions And Answers
Do I have to link all my accounts to use the Retirement Planner?
Linking makes projections more accurate, but you can enter balances manually if you prefer.
How often should I update my plan?
Empower recommends revisiting assumptions at least annually or after life events—job changes, big purchases, or market swings.
Can the Planner model early retirement?
Yes. Change your retirement-age slider to any year, and the tool recalculates instantly.
Empower Personal Wealth, LLC (“EPW”) compensates Benzinga for new leads. Benzinga is not an investment client of Empower Advisory Group, LLC.
