Flightline Foundry · Decision Architecture

Stay or Go: Retirement Income Visualizer

You are partway to a pension. Walking away feels like torching guaranteed money, and staying feels like renting out a decade of your life. This tool answers one narrow question honestly: if you leave now and build a career, can your household reasonably substitute the retirement cash flow the pension would have provided? All figures are in today's dollars.

Your Position Today

Profile
yrs
yrs
yrs
yrs
$
TSP, IRA, and other invested retirement assets. Both paths start from this number.
$
The annual cash flow your retirement actually needs. Both paths are measured against this line.

Path 1: Stay for the Pension

Stay
High-3 pays 2.5% per year of service. BRS pays 2.0% per year plus TSP matching up to 5% of basic pay while serving.
%
$
Pension is computed on basic pay only, not BAH or BAS.
$
Basic pay plus allowances. Used to size your savings while you finish the remaining years.
%
Most people who retire in their early forties keep working. Turning this off models pension income alone, which is the weakest honest version of the stay path.
$
%/yr
%
yrs
%
With a paycheck and a pension arriving together, some of the pension can be invested rather than spent.

Path 2: Leave Now

Go
$
%/yr
Above inflation. Promotions and job changes early in a second career often push this higher than the 1 to 2% economy-wide average.
%
%
$
The stay path keeps Tricare for life. This is your estimate of what civilian coverage costs you per year in retirement beyond that. It is deducted directly from the leave path's retirement income.

Household

Both paths
For many households this is the variable that makes the decision affordable at all. Their career is modeled separately for each path, because a career anchored to an active-duty family rarely looks like one that gets to put down roots.

Market Assumptions

Shared
%/yr
After inflation. Long-run diversified portfolios have historically landed near 4 to 6% real.
4.0%
How much of the portfolio converts to annual income. 4% is the common planning default; lower is more conservative.
Projected household retirement incomeat age 65
Stay to pension
$0
guaranteed: $0
Leave now
$0
guaranteed: $0

Income at Target Age

Today's dollars

Portfolio Trajectory

Your invested assets by age

What this tool does and does not claim

It does not claim you can replace a COLA-adjusted lifetime pension and Tricare dollar for dollar. Starting at your pension eligibility age, that package is extraordinarily valuable and nothing here pretends otherwise.

It claims something narrower: that a household can often build a retirement income at its target age that does the job the pension would have done. The guaranteed-versus-market distinction is shown honestly. Pension income is a floor; portfolio income depends on markets and discipline.

The math is the smaller half

This model has no input for missed birthdays, a spouse's career that finally gets to come first, deployments you will not take, or the person you want to be at 45. Those factors decided more of my own stay-or-go call than anything on this page, and they should probably decide more of yours.

Watch the walkthrough: how I actually made this decision →

Assumptions and Limits

Read me
  • All values are in today's dollars. Returns and salary growth are real, meaning above inflation.
  • Military pensions under both High-3 and BRS are COLA-adjusted, so pension income holds constant in real terms.
  • Military compensation is held flat in real terms over the remaining years of service, a simplification that slightly understates the stay path.
  • Under BRS, the 5% government TSP match is applied to basic pay, not total compensation.
  • Contributions are invested annually and compound at the real return. No taxes, sequence-of-returns risk, or market volatility are modeled.
  • A significant other's career is modeled separately for each path. Expected time out of work is spread evenly across the horizon and proportionally reduces both annual contributions and career growth, a simplification of gaps that in reality cluster around moves and deployments.
  • Portfolio income uses your chosen withdrawal rate. A pension has longevity insurance built in; a portfolio does not.
  • This is an educational model, not financial, tax, or legal advice. Talk to a fee-only fiduciary advisor before acting on a decision of this size.