Retirement Readiness Audit

What this audit measures

The Retirement Readiness Audit is a free educational self-assessment tool published by the Retirement Literacy Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It walks you through the five most consequential retirement-planning decision areas — the same ones our public workshops cover — and gives you a written summary of the gaps it spots.

• Social Security claiming timing — when you plan to file, your spouse's plan, the survivor-benefit decision tree. Filing decisions are largely irreversible after 12 months.
• Roth conversion window — the multi-year bracket-filling opportunity between retirement and your Required Minimum Distribution start date. Most retirees have a 5–10 year window and never use it.
• Medicare / IRMAA exposure — the 2-year lookback that converts your Roth conversions and capital gains into higher Medicare Part B premiums. Catches most retirees by surprise.
• RMD pressure & sequence-of-returns risk — how Required Minimum Distributions interact with a down market in your first decade of retirement.
• Survivor planning — what happens to your tax bracket, your Medicare premium, and your Social Security income when one spouse passes. The "Widow's Penalty" is one of the most overlooked retirement risks.

How the audit works

You answer a series of plain-English questions about your current retirement plan, the timing decisions you've already made, and any decisions still open. The tool flags each gap it identifies, explains in plain English why it matters, and shows you the math behind it.

What you'll need

• Your approximate age and your spouse's (if applicable)
• A rough sense of your retirement-account balances by tax-bucket (pre-tax / Roth / taxable)
• Your planned (or actual) Social Security claiming age
• Your approximate annual income from Social Security, pension, and withdrawals

How long it takes

Most people complete the audit in 5–8 minutes. You can pause and resume at any point — your answers stay in your browser session.

What you get

A written summary of the gaps the audit identified, plain-English explanations of why each one matters, and direct links to the specific free calculators on this site you can use to model the decision yourself. No follow-up sales call, no products being sold, no commissions earned.

Launch the audit

The interactive audit tool loads below. If it doesn't appear, please refresh the page or contact hans@retirementliteracyfoundation.org.

About the Retirement Literacy Foundation

The Retirement Literacy Foundation is a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit serving Southern California retirees with free workshops, interactive calculators, long-form case studies, and topic guides on Social Security, Medicare/IRMAA, Roth conversion strategy, the SECURE Act, and survivor planning. We accept no funding from insurance carriers, brokerages, or any financial-services company.

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