Investing, retirement, taxes, and the savings moves that compound quietly in the background. We show you the math before the sales pitch.
S&P 500 · YTD
+7.4%
Up 1.2% since last Friday
Most guides say "do Roth when you're young." That's wrong for about a third of people. We ran the numbers across 10 real salary + career paths so you can see which column you belong in.
Roth IRA
$487K
After 30 yrs · tax-free
Traditional
$548K
After 30 yrs · pre-tax
Delta after taxes
$61K — bracket-dependent
Four pillars, each with tested strategies, honest trade-offs, and a calculator to stress-test the plan.
Index funds, asset allocation, and rebalancing — without the adviser markup.
Browse category401(k), IRA, HSA, and the contribution order that squeezes out the most tax savings.
Browse categoryBrackets, deductions, and tax-loss harvesting explained without the jargon.
Browse categoryAutomation, anti-budgets, and the quiet moves that add up to thousands a year.
Browse categoryCompound interest calculator
See the 30-year curve. Then adjust one number and watch it move.
Retirement projection
When can you actually stop working? Plug in your real numbers.
Roth vs. Traditional
Side-by-side, after taxes. The answer changes more than you'd think.
Tax bracket estimator
Federal + state, effective vs. marginal — with 2026 brackets.
Grow Wealth · investing
One US total-market fund, one international, one bonds. Rebalance once a year. We show the actual drag of every more-complex strategy.
Grow Wealth · retirement
Match first. HSA before Roth. Traditional before backdoor. There's a reason each rung sits where it sits — and one move most people skip.
Grow Wealth · taxes
You don't need a wealth manager. We walk through the exact year-end sequence, the wash-sale trap, and when skipping it is smarter.
Market data refreshes daily; tax thresholds reflect the IRS 2026 tables.
+7.4%
Up 1.2% since last Friday
4.12%
Down 6 bps week-over-week
$7,500
+$500 from 2025 · $8,500 if 50+
$24,000
+$1,000 from 2025 · $32K catch-up
William Bengen's 1994 paper is the most quoted — and most misused — study in FIRE. We walk through what it actually says, what the update says, and the withdrawal framework that survives a bad first decade.
Read the withdrawal-rate guide47,000+ readers get market moves, retirement playbooks, and guides worth reading — in 5 bullets, every week.
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