Features
Every cliff, visible. Every formula, open.
CliffEdge is not a financial planner. It is a constraint visualizer — purpose-built for the DIY retiree who wants to understand exactly where the lines are, with the full math shown at every step. CliffEdge is not registered as an investment adviser or broker-dealer and does not hold itself out as one. Nothing on this page is a recommendation to buy, sell, convert, withdraw, or otherwise transact in any asset or account.
Seven Real-Time Cliff Gauges
Enter your income sources and watch seven gauges update instantly. Each gauge shows your current MAGI position relative to its cliff threshold — safe, approaching, or triggered. The gauges respond live as you dial income up or down.
Show Your Work
Every calculation shows the complete step-by-step formula: which inputs were used, which IRS or CMS rule was applied, and the exact arithmetic that produced the result. No number appears without an explanation. This is the feature no competitor offers.
Roth Conversion Slider
Dial a Roth conversion amount and see all seven cliffs update simultaneously. The slider makes it immediately obvious where the conversions start costing more than they save — the exact inflection point visible before you act.
Widow / Survivor Simulator
When a spouse dies, the tax situation changes dramatically: narrower brackets, lower IRMAA thresholds, and a sudden filing status change from MFJ to Single. The survivor simulator shows the before/after impact on every cliff. No other tool models this.
MAGI Headroom Calculation
CliffEdge computes exactly how many dollars of additional MAGI headroom you have before each cliff triggers. Not an approximation — the precise dollar amount, calculated from the same formulas the IRS uses, displayed alongside the cliff threshold.
Local-First. No Income Data Stored.
All calculations run in your browser — your income and tax numbers are never sent to our servers, including when you save a profile or create a Shared Link. No account is required to use any cliff gauge. An optional free account stores only your email address, used for annual tax-bracket update notices when CMS and IRS publish new figures.
Versioned Tax Tables
Every threshold is sourced from IRS, CMS, and HHS publications and stored in versioned JSON tables — never hardcoded. Each entry includes the source URL and the date it was last verified. When thresholds change annually, we update the tables.
All seven cliffs modeled.
Each cliff is computed from its own formula with its own MAGI definition. ACA MAGI and IRMAA MAGI use different add-back rules — CliffEdge keeps them separate and shows each calculation independently.