Jason Wootten

If retirement income needs to survive the worst early-market years, planning tools must do more than output a single “safe” withdrawal rate. The right tools make sequence-of-returns risk visible, quantify the damage from bad early returns, and help you pair flexible spending rules with income floors that reduce forced selling. This list focuses on ten practical retirement income planning tools that experienced planners use to pressure-test withdrawal plans: historical backtests, withdrawal-policy engines, claiming optimizers, ladder builders, annuity sanity-checkers, and “cash-buffer” instruments. Expect clear guidance on what each tool is best at, which settings matter most, and how to combine them into a plan that holds up when markets start poorly.  Tool 1: FIRECalc (Historical Backtesting Across Every Start Year) FIRECalc is built to answer the question sequence risk actually asks: “If retirement begins in a bad year, does the plan still work?” Instead of relying on averages,...

The most effective digital legacy and password-transfer tools combine encrypted vaults, controlled emergency access, and beneficiary workflows that let your executor access critical accounts without exposing sensitive data prematurely. Digital assets now represent a meaningful share of personal and business value, from cloud storage and subscriptions to financial accounts and crypto wallets. This article walks through the most trusted tools available today, how each one works in practice, and how to select the right option for an estate plan that actually functions when it is needed. Why digital legacy planning matters more than most estate plans anticipate Digital assets change faster than traditional assets, and that volatility creates risk if access details live only in static documents. Passwords rotate, platforms update security rules, and two-factor authentication can block executors even when legal authority exists. Estate plans that ignore this reality often leave families loc...