Where every number comes from, the one approximation it cannot avoid, and the list of things it deliberately leaves out. If you are going to rely on a figure, you should be able to check it.
The short version. The Snapshot is an educational estimate, not a plan and not advice. Your pension comes out of the Pension Fund's own published formula for your tier. Your tax comes out of the 2026 federal tables. Your deferred compensation is shown as a range rather than a number, because a range is the only honest form for money invested in markets.
Everything is worked out in your own browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing is stored, unless you choose to give us your email address.
This is the same list the printable version carries on its own assumptions page, so a document can be checked years after it was produced.
| The figure | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Your pension | The New York City Police Pension Fund's own Tier 2 and Tier 3 plan documents, June 2026 edition, and the New York Retirement and Social Security Law where the plan documents are silent. Tier 2 past twenty years: half your final average salary plus one sixtieth of pensionable earnings after your twentieth anniversary. Tier 3: a flat half of final average salary at twenty years. |
| Escalation, Tier 3 | Retirement and Social Security Law section 510. Escalation is barred where a pension begins more than three years before the twenty-five year mark, and the plan document alone does not tell you that. The rate is tied to the consumer price index and capped at three percent a year. |
| The Social Security reduction, Tier 3 | Retirement and Social Security Law section 511. From age 62 a Tier 3 pension is reduced by half your primary Social Security benefit, whether or not you have claimed it. Not modelled as a dollar amount, because it depends on an earnings record only the Social Security Administration holds. Every figure shown is before it. |
| Federal tax | Internal Revenue Service Revenue Procedure 2025-32, the 2026 tables and standard deduction, for a single filer or married filing jointly. |
| New York State and City tax | Both plan documents. An NYPD pension is exempt from New York State and New York City income tax, which is why leaving New York changes nothing about the pension itself. The Variable Supplements Fund payment is federally taxable ordinary income. |
| Investment return | J.P. Morgan Asset Management's 2026 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions, data as of September 30 2025, less our 1.00% advisory fee. A 75/25 mix of stocks and bonds works out at 5.4% a year compound, net of all fees. An outside study rather than a house view, so the figure is not ours to flatter. |
| Volatility | The same study. Blended from the underlying stock and bond volatilities at the study's own correlation between them, which works out at 12.76% a year for that mix. Derived from the mix rather than chosen, so it moves when the mix moves. |
| Inflation | Held at 3% a year, deliberately above the study's own 2.5% figure. A higher inflation assumption makes every result harder to reach rather than easier. |
| Survivor option costs | Not shown, because they cannot honestly be shown outside the Pension Fund. See survivor options for the full explanation. |
If you are Tier 2 with more than twenty years, there is one place where the tool has to substitute something for a figure you almost certainly do not have to hand, and you should know about it.
The Tier 2 formula adds one sixtieth of your total pensionable earnings after your twentieth anniversary. That is a running total of actual pay, including overtime, not a rate. Almost nobody knows it. So the Snapshot stands in years past twenty multiplied by your final average salary.
That substitution is exact only if your pay was flat after year twenty. If your pay has been climbing, through steps, promotion or more overtime, the real figure is lower than the estimate shows. The Fund's own number is the one to work from, and it appears on your member statement.
These two are treated completely differently on purpose.
Your pension follows a formula written into law. Given the same service and the same final average salary, it produces the same answer every time. There is nothing to simulate, so the Snapshot does not simulate it.
Your deferred compensation is money in markets, and nobody knows what markets will do. So instead of one number, the Snapshot runs 10,000 simulated market histories and reports three points from the spread: a weaker outcome, a middle one, and a stronger one. All three are stated in today's money, so they are comparable to what you spend now.
A single projected balance would look more useful and be less true. The range is the honest form, and the gap between the weaker and the stronger figure is itself the information: it tells you how much of your plan is resting on something outside anyone's control.
The simulation is seeded, which means the same inputs always produce the same range. Run it twice and you will not get two different answers.
Neither of these is visible on screen, and both are the reason we are willing to put figures in front of you.
The formulas exist twice, and the two copies are tested against each other. The pension and tax formulas are written once for our internal planning work and once for the tool in your browser. Two copies of anything eventually disagree, so 1,440 test cases across both tiers, a range of service lengths, salaries, ages and filing statuses are run through both, and every deployment checks that all 1,440 still agree. If they ever do not, the deployment stops.
Every combination of answers is rendered and read. The written sections are assembled from a fixed library of paragraphs rather than generated fresh each time, and no artificial intelligence writes any of it. Before release, 3,072 combinations of inputs are produced in full and checked for contradictions, for figures that do not match the engine that produced them, and for anything that reads as a recommendation rather than an explanation.
A short list of limitations is usually a sign nobody looked hard. Here is the real one.
Nothing leaves your device. The arithmetic runs in your browser, there is no figure sent to us as you type, and no file is created anywhere.
The printable version is your own browser's print function, which is why it is not a download. That is not a limitation we worked around; it is the reason your numbers stay yours.
If you give us your email address, that address and what you asked to hear about are what we receive. Your pension figures are not attached to it.
The Snapshot is an educational estimate built from figures you supply. It is not a financial plan, it is not a recommendation, it is not a promise about any investment, and it is not a substitute for the Pension Fund's own numbers or for advice from a licensed professional.
A full financial plan is a different piece of work: it takes in the whole household, it is built to the CFP Board's practice standards, and a person is responsible for it. William Harrison, our Founder and Chief Investment Officer, leads that work. What the Snapshot is for is arriving at that conversation already knowing what your own numbers do.
Every figure here should be confirmed with the New York City Police Pension Fund, the New York City Deferred Compensation Plan and a qualified tax professional before you act on it. Where our estimate and the Fund disagree, the Fund is right.
The Snapshot sits at the bottom of the NYPD calculator. It takes about a minute once you have your appointment date, your years of service and your final average salary.
Educational information only. Not investment, tax or legal advice, not a recommendation, and not a guarantee. Hypothetical results are not a forecast and will differ from what actually happens.