Retirement Calculator

There is no universal number, because it depends entirely on the income you want and how long you need it to last. The common shortcut is 25 times your desired annual spending, which comes from the 4% rule. If you want $60,000 a year from your portfolio, that shortcut suggests around $1.5 million.

This calculator does something more precise: it subtracts your expected Social Security or pension income first, inflates the remainder to your retirement year, and then works out the balance required to fund that income across your full retirement at your assumed return.

Most planners model a diversified stock-heavy portfolio somewhere between 6% and 8% nominal, before inflation. The long-run US stock market average is higher, but using the headline historical figure tends to flatter a plan.

The more useful habit is to run the calculation twice. Once at a rate you would be happy with, and once about two points lower. If your plan only survives the optimistic version, you need a bigger margin of safety, not a better spreadsheet.

Yes, but conservatively. Ignoring it entirely will overstate how much you need to save, sometimes dramatically. Your personalised estimate is available from your annual Social Security statement.

If you are decades away and worried about future benefit changes, a common compromise is to enter 70–80% of your projected benefit rather than the full amount, then check whether the plan still holds together.

It remains a reasonable planning anchor, not a law. The original research tested a 30-year retirement with a balanced portfolio and found a 4% initial withdrawal, raised annually with inflation, rarely ran out.

Two things weaken it: a retirement much longer than 30 years, and poor returns in the first few years, which is the sequence-of-returns problem. Many people now plan closer to 3.5% and stay flexible about spending in bad market years.

Start with the age you would genuinely like to stop working, then test it. Retirement age is the single most powerful lever in the whole model, because moving it changes three variables at once.

Try entering 62, 65, and 67 in turn. The swing in your surplus is usually far larger than anything you would achieve by chasing a slightly better investment return.

It affects both sides. It raises the cost of the lifestyle you are targeting, and it erodes the purchasing power of the balance you accumulate. At 2.5% a year, costs roughly double over 28 years.

That is why this tool inflates your desired income to your retirement year, keeps raising withdrawals through retirement, and also reports your projected balance in today’s money.

A widely used benchmark is 15% of gross income including any employer match, starting in your twenties. Starting later pushes that percentage up quickly.

Rather than guessing, use the “monthly needed to hit target” figure this calculator produces. It solves backwards from your specific target, ages, and assumptions, which is a far more useful number than a generic percentage.

No, but the levers change. With a shorter runway, compounding does less of the work, so contribution rate and retirement age carry more weight than they would for someone in their twenties.

Catch-up contributions to a 401(k) or IRA once you turn 50 raise your annual limits meaningfully. Model a later retirement age alongside a higher contribution and you will usually find the gap closes faster than expected.