About RetireConfident
RetireConfident is a free retirement calculator built for Australian conditions — the Age Pension means tests, superannuation rules, and defined benefit schemes that most overseas tools ignore or get wrong.
It isn't selling you anything
There are no ads on this site. There is no signup, no email capture, and no free tier leading to a paid one. Nothing is for sale, no leads are passed to advisers, and there are no referral or commission arrangements with any fund, platform or product. RetireConfident is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any superannuation fund, financial institution or government agency.
That matters more than it might sound. Most retirement calculators are marketing assets: they exist to move you toward a product, and their assumptions are chosen accordingly. This one has no such pressure on it, which is the main reason it can afford to tell you when your plan doesn't work.
Your figures stay in your browser. Scenarios you save are stored locally on your own device, not on a server. The site uses privacy-focused analytics to count visits and see which features get used — that is how a free tool built by one person decides what to fix next. It is deliberately limited: no session recording, no IP addresses, no user profiles, and no cookies (the site uses PostHog with those features switched off, plus Vercel's cookieless page counts). The numbers you enter and the projections the calculator produces are never collected.
How it's built and checked
The projection engine is covered by more than 700 automated tests, including regression baselines that fail if a change moves a single number in a saved scenario unexpectedly. Government parameters — Age Pension thresholds, contribution caps, the Transfer Balance Cap — are held in dedicated modules with automated checks that block a release if they fall out of date. Every modelling assumption is written down on the Assumptions page, including the ones that are simplifications.
When something is wrong, it gets fixed and said out loud. The updates page documents each change, including the errors — a period when the engine used stale Age Pension thresholds, and an aged care model that badly understated the chance of needing residential care. Publishing those is uncomfortable and it is the point: a calculator you can't audit is a calculator you shouldn't trust.
It is built and maintained independently by one person — an engineer planning their own retirement — in their own time, which is why it is free and why it has no commercial agenda.
Feedback genuinely changes it
The projection engine has an automated test suite. The written guides and the modelling judgements behind them do not — they rely on readers who know their own situation better than any author can. Several parts of this site exist, or were corrected, because somebody took the time to write in.
Two things are especially welcome:
- Corrections. If a figure looks wrong, a rule has been misdescribed, or something doesn't match your own statement from your fund, please say so. Specifics help most — which page, which number, and what you believe it should be.
- Feature ideas. What can't you model that you need to? What question about your retirement does this tool fail to answer? Requests like these shape what gets built next, and they get read by the person who writes the code.
One honest caveat on feature requests: this is built by one person around a full-time job, so not every idea can be implemented — but every one is genuinely considered, and several of the tool's features started as an email from a reader.
Important: RetireConfident provides general information only. It does not take your objectives, financial situation or needs into account, and it is not personal financial advice. Projections are estimates based on assumptions that will not match your actual experience. Before acting on anything you see here, consider seeking advice from a licensed financial adviser.