Retirement Calculator

The question this calculator actually answers

"How much will I have at retirement?" is a narrower question than "what spending power will I have, given my plan and a realistic range of outcomes?" The figure this tool produces is the central estimate under the assumptions entered. What matters as much as the number is how far it moves when those assumptions change, which is what the What-If cards and the year-by-year table are there to show.

The four inputs and what each one does

The result depends on four inputs: current retirement savings, monthly contribution, expected annual return, and years to retirement. None of them is marginal. At the defaults the 80,000 opening balance alone grows to roughly 323,000, about 47% of the 687,700 projection, with the monthly contributions and their growth making up the rest. The return assumption carries the widest spread: at the 20-year default a 7% return produces about 1.36 times what a 5% return produces, and over 30 years, holding the other defaults, that rises to about 1.6 times.

Real or nominal: which figure this produces

The calculator compounds whatever return is entered and applies no inflation adjustment of its own. The result is expressed in the same terms as the rate: enter a nominal return and the projected balance is in future money; enter a real, after-inflation return and it is in today's spending power. The real-return figures quoted elsewhere on this page are after-inflation rates, so entering one of them produces a balance in today's money.

What "enough" actually means

The most common retirement-planning heuristic is the 25x rule: 25 times annual expenses invested at retirement to sustain 30 or more years of withdrawals at a 4% rate. Spend 30,000 a year in retirement and that implies 750,000; spend 50,000 and it implies 1.25m. The 4% figure comes from the Trinity Study (1998), which tested historical data and found that a 4% inflation-adjusted withdrawal survived the large majority of 30-year windows in the period examined, with the success rate depending on the stock and bond mix assumed. It is a rule of thumb rather than a guarantee, and it remains the most-cited benchmark.

Why the 4% rule has aged

The Trinity Study used 1926-1995 data. Several conditions have changed since: life expectancy is longer, so a 65-year-old today has a meaningful chance of a retirement running well beyond 30 years; bond yields have spent long stretches below their historical averages; and equity valuations at the start of some retirement windows have been higher. Later analyses have proposed lower starting withdrawal rates, commonly in the 3% to 4% region, reflecting those conditions. The 4% figure is still widely used as a central estimate, and whether it is read as an upper bound or a midpoint varies between analysts.

Sequence of returns: the hidden risk

The most consequential factor in retirement is not the average market return, it is when the returns happen. Two retirees with identical 30-year average returns can end with very different outcomes depending on whether losses came early or late. A 30% market drop in year three of retirement, before the pot has had time to grow, does more damage than the same drop in year 25. This is sequence-of-returns risk, and it is why the withdrawal rate chosen for the early years can affect the outcome as much as the average return across the whole period.

How a state or workplace pension fits in

Many countries provide a state or government pension that acts as a baseline floor in retirement, though on its own it rarely funds a full lifestyle. Occupational or personal pensions fill the gap. In jurisdictions that grant tax relief on pension contributions, the effective cost of contributing is lower than the headline amount, and the size of that relief varies by country and by income level. Where an employer matches contributions, the match is additional employer-funded money on top of what the employee pays in. This calculator does not distinguish between account types and models no tax treatment, so contributions are counted at face value.

Longevity and how long the pot needs to last

Life expectancy at 65 varies substantially by country, sex, and birth cohort, and national statistics agencies publish the relevant tables. The point that carries across all of them is that a pot planned to last only to median life expectancy leaves roughly half the distribution uncovered. This calculator projects over the number of years entered rather than to a retirement age, so lengthening that figure shows how the required pot changes.

The three levers when the projection falls short

Where the projection falls short of a target, three routes close the gap. Working longer is the largest lever: each additional year adds a year of contributions, removes a year of drawdown, and in many systems defers state pension access. Contributing more is a smaller lever but a more predictable one than assuming higher returns. Raising the return assumption is the least reliable of the three, since a higher assumed return is a statement about markets rather than something within the saver's control. The Years to Retirement and Monthly Contribution inputs cover the first two directly, and the Goal Tracker back-solves an input for a target balance.

What the projection can't tell you

The calculator produces a deterministic path: one return, one contribution rate, one horizon. Real retirements involve variable returns, changing contributions, health events, inheritances, and partial work in later years. A single projection is a snapshot of one path among many, which is why re-running it as circumstances change tends to be more informative than the figure on its own. The point of running this calculator is not to be right in 30 years — it is to make this year's plan less wrong.