Your Legacy Isn’t a Number. It’s a Plan.

Most planners show legacy as a single figure on a chart: the pile you leave when the plan ends. It’s the least actionable number in the plan — it doesn’t tell you whether you’re over-saving, or how much the tax man takes first.

So we rebuilt Legacy around a different question: not “what will you leave?” but “the most you can spend while still leaving what you want.”

Set a target — leave the kids $X — and RetIQ treats it as a floor. Maximum Spending now answers: how much can we spend each year and still hit that number? If you were heading to $8M and only want to leave $4M, the gap is room to live, shown as spare spending. If your spending can’t reach the target, you’ll see that too — with the levers to fix it, and an honest note when it isn’t reachable at all.

What heirs actually keep

A legacy is a pile of accounts with different tax characters — and that difference is often tens of percent of what your family receives. Legacy now shows net-to-heirs:

Pre-tax (IRA/401k): heirs inherit a tax bill — ordinary income over the SECURE Act’s ten years.

Roth: tax-free to heirs. The best thing to leave.

Brokerage / cash: basis steps up at death, so gains pass tax-free; federal estate tax applies above $15M per person.

State estate & inheritance tax: 12 states plus DC levy an estate tax, six levy an inheritance tax — both now modeled.

$2M of Roth is worth more to your family than $2M of IRA. Legacy should show that — and the moves follow: spend more, convert, draw down the right accounts, relocate, give.

Your legacy is the last decision your plan makes for the people you love. Set the goal, and let the plan spend the rest.