Retirement calculator

What your retirement result shows

The headline answers the only question that matters: does the money last? If it does, you see what is left at the end. If it does not, you see the age it runs out and the monthly contribution that would fix it — solved rather than estimated, so it is a target you can act on this month.

The line to check first is the withdrawal rate: your first year’s withdrawal as a percentage of the pot at retirement. It is the standard measure of whether a plan is sustainable, and above roughly 4.5% history suggests a portfolio has often been run down before the end. Seeing it stated is more useful than any single balance figure, because it puts your plan on the same scale as every published rule of thumb.

Everything you enter is in today’s money and inflated internally. That matters more than it sounds: a $60,000 income need becomes well over $100,000 a year three decades out, and a calculator that quietly compares a future balance to a present-day income target will tell you that you are fine when you are not.

How to use this retirement calculator

1. Ages. Your age now, when you plan to stop, and how long to plan for. Plan past average life expectancy — running out is a far worse error than leaving money behind.
2. Saved so far and saving each month, across every retirement account and including the employer match.
3. The income you want, per year, in today’s money. A common starting point is 70–80% of current gross pay, but the useful version is to add up what you actually expect to spend.
4. Social Security from your ssa.gov statement rather than a guess. For many households it covers a third to a half of the target, so an error here swamps every other input.
5. Two return rates — before and during retirement. The second is usually lower, and dropping it is the most instructive sensitivity test on the page.

The 4% rule, and what it is really for

The guideline says a portfolio can support withdrawals of about 4% of its starting value in the first year, rising with inflation, and last around thirty years. It came from studying historical US market returns, and it is a useful yardstick rather than a law.

Three things narrow it. It assumes a roughly balanced stock-and-bond portfolio, so a very conservative allocation supports less. It assumes about thirty years, so retiring at 55 needs a lower rate and retiring at 70 can support more. And it is silent about the order of returns — a bad first few years while withdrawals have already begun does far more damage than the same years later, because you are selling assets into a fall.

The practical use is as a reality check, not a target. If this calculator shows a first-year rate near 6%, the plan depends on either a strong market or a spending cut, and it is better to know that now than at 75.

Social Security is the input people get wrong

Social Security is inflation-adjusted, paid for life and backed by the federal government, which makes it the most valuable asset in most retirement plans — and the one most often entered as a round guess. Your own estimate is on your ssa.gov statement, based on your actual earnings record.

When you claim changes it substantially. Claiming at 62 permanently reduces the benefit; waiting past full retirement age increases it, up to 70. Because the increase is guaranteed and inflation-linked, delaying is often the best value available to a healthy retiree — and it is why some people deliberately spend from savings in their sixties in order to claim later.

Two cautions for this calculator. Enter the figure in today’s money, as the calculator inflates it alongside your income target. And if you are married, the household total including a spousal or survivor benefit is what matters, not one statement.

The levers, in order of power

• Retirement age. The strongest lever by a wide margin, because each extra year adds a year of saving and growth and removes a year of withdrawals. Try moving it by two and watch the result.
• The income you need. A reduction is permanent and compounds across every year of retirement. It is also the lever most within your control.
• The monthly contribution, especially early. The employer match is free money and should be captured before anything else.
• When you claim Social Security, for the reasons above.
• The return you earn — which you influence mainly through costs rather than skill, and which you should not plan on being generous.

What is striking when you try them is how unequal they are. Two extra working years will usually do more than a percentage point of extra return, and a $5,000 reduction in annual spending does more than either — because it compounds across every remaining year of the plan and does not depend on markets cooperating. The levers you control are the ones that move the answer.

It is also worth separating the levers you can pull now from the ones you can pull later. Contributions and costs are decisions available this month. Retirement age and claiming age stay open for years and can be revisited as the picture changes, which is why a plan that looks short at 45 is not a verdict — it is information, arriving early enough to be useful.

Sequence risk: why the first five years decide a lot

Two retirees can average the same return over thirty years and end up in completely different places, purely because of the order the returns arrived in. The reason is that withdrawals have already started: a fall early in retirement forces you to sell more units to raise the same income, and those units are never there to recover when the market does.

A poor first decade is therefore far more dangerous than a poor last one, even though a smooth projection like the one above treats them identically. That asymmetry is the single largest thing this calculator cannot show you, and it is why conventional advice reduces risk as the money is needed rather than after.

Three defences are worth knowing. Holding one to three years of spending in cash or short-term bonds means an early fall does not have to be sold into. Flexibility about withdrawals — taking less in bad years, which the 4% rule assumes you will not do — improves the odds substantially. And guaranteed inflation-linked income, principally Social Security claimed later, reduces how much has to come from the portfolio at all.

The practical test is to rerun this page with the retirement-phase return two or three points lower than you expect. If the plan still reaches the finish line, it has room for a bad decade. If it does not, that is worth knowing while you can still do something about it.

What this calculator assumes

• Steady returns and steady inflation. Neither behaves that way, and the order of returns in the first years of retirement matters more than the average — the largest simplification here.
• A flat monthly contribution, not increased with pay. Raising it annually would finish materially higher, so this is conservative.
• Withdrawals at the start of each retirement year, with the remainder growing for the rest of the year.
• No tax in retirement. Withdrawals from traditional accounts are taxable income, so a plan needing $60,000 to spend needs more than $60,000 withdrawn — see the RMD calculator for the withdrawals the IRS will eventually force, and note that Roth money is not taxed on the way out.
• Social Security as entered, inflation-linked, with no assumption about future legislative changes.
• No other income — pension, annuity, part-time work, rental income or downsizing a home would all improve the picture.

These are planning estimates, not advice. A plan this consequential is worth checking with a fiduciary adviser as retirement approaches.

Retirement questions people ask

Related calculators

See all networth.com calculators →