Common to all strategies: QCDs (if configured) are applied first - they satisfy the RMD requirement dollar-for-dollar without adding to taxable income. Any remaining RMD obligation after QCDs is then taken as a taxable IRA withdrawal. Both happen before strategy logic runs.

Proportional Withdraw +% - draws IRA, Brokerage, and Cash proportionally (relative to their balances) to cover the spend goal. An optional IRA-only boost adds boost% × spend goal on top of that; the after-tax surplus flows to Roth conversion. At 0% boost this is the pure proportional baseline. Gap fill if still short: Brokerage + Cash (60/40), then Roth, then back to the IRA as a last resort.

Reduce IRA in N Years - calculates the annual IRA draw needed to amortize the IRA down to the IRA Goal (today's dollars, inflation-adjusted to each year) over the N years you choose (similar to a mortgage payment). RMDs count toward that target; the strategy draws any remaining amount beyond RMDs. Gap fill if the IRA draw alone doesn't cover spending: Cash → Brokerage → Roth, then back to the IRA as a last resort.

Fill Federal Tax Bracket / IRMAA Tier (soft ceiling) - draws IRA up to a chosen ceiling (top of a federal bracket or an IRMAA tier threshold), then fills any remaining spending from non-taxable sources in order: Cash → Brokerage → Roth. The ceiling is soft: if spending still can’t be met after those are exhausted and the IRA has funds, the simulation draws extra IRA above the ceiling to fund mandatory spending - because spending is a hard requirement and the alternative (an unfunded shortfall while a large IRA sits idle) is worse. The amount drawn above the ceiling appears in the ForcedIRA column with that year’s BracketOverage; the consequence is extra tax (or, for IRMAA, a Medicare surcharge). The ceiling also defines the room available for Roth conversions.

ACA Cliff (strict ceiling) - draws IRA only up to a chosen multiple of the Federal Poverty Level, then fills spending from Cash → Brokerage → Roth. Unlike the bracket/IRMAA ceilings, the ACA cap is strict: it is never breached, because exceeding it forfeits the entire ACA premium subsidy (a cliff, not a gradual cost). If spending can’t be met within the cap, the plan is genuinely untenable at that spend level - the shortfall is shown (red rows) and the strategy is flagged ⚠️ in the Optimizer, rather than silently overspending the cap. Note that on a large pre-tax IRA, required minimum distributions alone can push income above a low FPL multiple, making ACA targeting infeasible regardless of withdrawals. The cap ends at Medicare. ACA premium subsidies stop when Medicare eligibility begins, so from the year every living person in the plan is old enough for Medicare there is no subsidy left to protect and the cap is dropped - the strategy runs as Proportional 0% from that year onward. Until then the cap is measured against household income, so if one spouse is already on Medicare their RMDs and Social Security still count against the other spouse’s limit.

IRA Draw % - withdraws a fixed percentage of the current IRA balance each year regardless of the spend goal (RMDs count toward the target). Gap fill if the after-tax IRA draw falls short of spending: Cash → Brokerage → Roth, then above the stated percentage as a last resort. Useful for a mechanical, balance-proportional drawdown pace.

Ordered - draws from accounts in a strict sequence; unlike other strategies, all spending is handled in this ordered pass (nothing is pre-withdrawn). Because the sequence is the one you chose, Ordered is the only strategy that will not draw extra IRA outside it, so it can leave a small residual shortfall while an account later in the sequence still holds money. That is the strategy answering your question, not a failure to find the money. The fill follows the same order: any year the plan runs a surplus (income beyond spending), that surplus is banked in the first account your sequence would draw that can actually receive a deposit, Cash or Brokerage (Roth and the IRA are contribution-limited). That keeps it first in line to be spent again next year instead of stranded in a last-drawn account. A Cash-first sequence is unchanged from the older cash-only behavior; a Brokerage-first one banks surplus in Brokerage. Six of the 24 possible sequences are offered, listed with the ones that most often came out ahead in testing at the top.

• CBRI (Cash → Brokerage → Roth → IRA): spends taxable money first and leaves the IRA for last, taking Roth ahead of it. Best of the six most often in testing, and the one to try first if the IRA is large enough that a late, forced drawdown is the risk.
• CBIR (Cash → Brokerage → IRA → Roth): depletes taxable accounts first, letting tax-advantaged balances compound longest. The conventional "textbook" depletion order, and the default.
• CIBR (Cash → IRA → Brokerage → Roth): spends Cash, then draws the IRA before touching the brokerage account. Useful when brokerage gains are large enough that realizing them is the expensive move, or when filling low tax brackets early matters more.
• BCIR (Brokerage → Cash → IRA → Roth): sells brokerage before spending Cash, keeping the cash buffer intact longest.
• RIBC (Roth → IRA → Brokerage → Cash): burns tax-free Roth first; useful for stress-testing Roth-heavy portfolios or modeling an intentional Roth-first drawdown.
• BIRC (Brokerage → IRA → Roth → Cash): clears brokerage before tax-deferred, and spends Cash last.

Guardrails (GK-style) are not a strategy: they decide how much you spend, under whichever of the strategies above you choose. See Guardrails under Strategy panel controls, below.

Cycle Brokerage - a toggle that layers on top of any strategy. When enabled, the simulation alternates between IRA draw years and brokerage harvest years. The cycle length N is recomputed each year as round(IRA ÷ Brokerage), so the ratio self-corrects as balances evolve. In a harvest year, spending is funded from brokerage capital gains instead of IRA withdrawals, realizing gains at the preferential LTCG rate (often 0% for many retirees) rather than as ordinary income. Advantages: (1) steps up the cost basis each cycle, reducing future LTCG tax; (2) frees the full IRA bracket headroom for Roth conversions in harvest years; (3) lower MAGI in IRA years can keep IRMAA tiers lower. DRIP (dividend reinvestment) is automatically forced on so dividends reinvest into brokerage rather than leaking to Cash as ordinary income. Two orderings are available: IRA-first (🗘 red) runs N IRA years then harvests - better when the brokerage has high unrealized gains (delay harvest to let IRA deplete first); Brokerage-first (🔄) harvests immediately at the start of each cycle - better when brokerage basis is high (low gains) so the tax cost of harvesting is small. The Optimizer and Monte Carlo always evaluate all three variants. Caveats: harvest years raise MAGI, triggering IRMAA surcharges 2 years later and potentially causing ACA cliff loss; with a very high-gains brokerage the strategy can become less effective as effective LTCG rate rises over time.

Strategy panel controls - these sit with your strategy in the sidebar and affect every tab:

• Guardrails - a switch under Spend Delta that lets spending move with your savings instead of holding it fixed, under whichever withdrawal strategy you choose. It is a Guyton-Klinger-style rule rather than the published one: what it measures is your whole spending against your savings, where the published rule watches what your portfolio withdraws - a different number for anyone whose Social Security or pension starts later. The README’s Limitations and Restrictions section names all four places the two differ. Your first year sets the safe level: what you spend for each dollar you have saved. Each year after that, your spending is compared with the safe level for the savings you have then. If your savings have fallen far enough that spending is more than a set band above it, spending is cut; if they have grown far enough that spending is more than the band below it, spending is raised, by the same amount either way. After a year with a negative return, the inflation raise is also skipped while spending is above the safe level. The tool uses a band of ±20% and a step of 10%, and the sentence under the switch states the values in force; the two settings can be changed only in the advanced view. Spend Delta still applies on top, so with the default of −1% a year both shape your spending. The Optimizer and Monte Carlo run every strategy with your Guardrails setting, plus your own plan with the switch the other way around, so you can see what Guardrails are worth to your plan, and Monte Carlo's My Plan Only runs just your plan both ways. Because the two spend differently, compare them on Spendable as well as ending wealth. A plan saved when Guyton-Klinger was a withdrawal strategy loads as Proportional Withdraw at 0% with Guardrails on, which gives the same numbers.
• Maximize Conversions - gets as much into Roth as the plan allows, two ways at once. First, any IRA withdrawal surplus beyond the spend goal is converted to Roth rather than left in Cash. That is a same-dollar move: the money was already withdrawn and taxed on its way out, so this only changes where it lands, and nothing is lost to tax by doing it. Second, it uses available Cash to cover conversion taxes rather than letting those taxes come out of the conversion itself - the standard advice for Roth conversions, and what makes an Extra Annual Roth Conversion $ of $20,000 actually deliver $20,000 to the Roth instead of roughly $13,700 (see the field below). It only ever uses Cash you have: when Cash is short it covers what it can, and at $0 Cash it changes nothing. The two switches beneath it, Convert Excess to Roth and Use Cash, split it into its halves so you can run either alone. On by default in the Optimizer (see note below); toggle it on in single-scenario mode to match.
• Extra Annual Roth Conversion $ - a fixed dollar amount converted from IRA to Roth every year, on top of whatever your strategy and Maximize Conversions already do. Two things to know. (1) The amount you enter is the gross withdrawal from the IRA, and a conversion owes tax on it. Without Use Cash, that tax comes out of the conversion, so less arrives in Roth than you typed - $20,000 entered lands about $13,700 at a 31% marginal rate. With Use Cash on, Cash covers the tax and the full $20,000 lands. Either way, the Roth Conv column in Annual Details shows what actually arrived; the extraConv column (Opp. Cost category) shows the gross. (2) It is capped only by your remaining IRA balance each year - it does not stop at your IRA Goal, because a conversion moves money IRA-to-Roth rather than out of the household, and drawing the IRA down is usually the point. This is the same amount the Optimizer's Optimize Conversions search solves for, and loading a ⇌ row fills it in for you.
• Stop conversions after - the last year Roth conversions run. Enter a calendar year (for example 2031) or your age (for example 71); conversions stop the year after. Leave it blank to convert for the whole plan. The choice beside it sets what stops: all conversions stops both your strategy’s own bracket filling and the Extra Annual Roth Conversion $, while extra only stops just the Extra Annual Roth Conversion and lets the strategy keep filling brackets. Converting past the point where the tax paid stops earning its keep can leave you worse off than not converting at all.
• Roth before Brokerage - when a year’s spending needs more than your strategy itself withdraws, the shortfall is filled from Cash, then Brokerage, then Roth. Switch this on to take Roth ahead of Brokerage; Cash still comes first. Drawing Roth avoids realizing capital gains, but it spends the account that grows tax-free, so it helps some plans and hurts others, and nothing about a plan predicts which. The Optimizer runs it both ways and marks the alternative 🅡. Ordered ignores it and draws in the sequence you chose.
• Cycle Brokerage - layers cyclic IRA/brokerage alternation on top of any strategy (see Cycle Brokerage above).

Optimizer search options - these two live at the top of the Optimizer tab rather than the sidebar, because they change only what the Optimizer searches for and have no effect on your single-scenario plan, the charts, or Monte Carlo:

• Optimize Spend - after the Optimizer finds successful strategies, it binary-searches each one for the highest sustainable spend goal that still ends with at least two years of funded wealth. Those rows are marked ✦.
• Optimize Conversions - for the top five Optimizer strategies, sweeps additional fixed annual conversion amounts ($25k steps) to find the best Extra Annual Roth Conversion $ for each, and adds a ⇌ row per winner. Click one to load that whole plan, including the conversion amount, back into the sidebar. Slower (5–15 sec for large IRAs).

Charitable Giving (QCDs) - the Charitable Giving (QCD) block at the bottom of the Annual Income & QCDs section lets you enter a combined household annual QCD maximum. A Qualified Charitable Distribution is a direct transfer from a traditional IRA to a qualifying charity. It satisfies the RMD requirement for that year without adding to your taxable income, which can reduce or eliminate IRMAA Medicare surcharges. Rules: age 70½+ per person (the simulation uses birth month for precision); the IRS limit is $111,000/person/year in 2026, CPI-indexed annually. QCDs are sourced first from the larger eligible IRA, then the smaller. Two modes: Always (switch right, green) donates the full amount every eligible year regardless of tax situation - useful for regular charitable giving goals. As Needed (switch left) applies only as much as needed to drop two IRMAA tiers from your projected MAGI, or to escape the surcharge entirely - whichever requires fewer dollars. Use this when your primary goal is IRMAA avoidance rather than a fixed giving commitment. In either mode your entered amount is the ceiling - the simulation never exceeds it.

Optimizer note: Every Optimizer row converts surplus after spending to Roth, regardless of your sidebar setting - enable Maximize Conversions in the strategy panel to match that assumption in single-scenario mode. Cash-funded conversion taxes work differently: normally Optimizer rows just follow your sidebar setting, so toggling Maximize Conversions changes what the table reports. Under nerdknob the Optimizer instead sweeps it as its own dimension, listing each strategy both with cash-funded taxes (💵) and without, so you can see what that choice is worth rather than assuming it. Those extra rows only appear when you actually have Cash, since the feature does nothing without it.