Retirement Calculator
Plan your future: see if your savings are on track to last through retirement (and by how much).
Details
= $750/mo
= $5,000/mo
per month
Projected nest egg at retirement
$2,633,458
At age 67 (37 years of saving)
Shortfall
At this pace, your savings run out around age 84, 8 years short of your age 92 planning horizon.
Total contributions
$635,568
Investment growth
$1,997,890
Spending goal at retirement
$14,926/mo
Needed from savings
$14,926/mo
This projects what your retirement savings grow to, from your current balance, monthly contributions, expected return and years remaining.
It separates what you contribute from what the market provides, and shows the income the final balance could support.
How retirement saving adds up
A retirement projection has two halves: building a balance while you work, and drawing an income from it afterwards. Both matter, and the first is easier to influence.
The input that dominates is time. $500 a month at 7% becomes $609,985 over 30 years and $1,312,407 over 40. Ten extra years adds a third to what you pay in and more than doubles what you end with.
The other half is the income. A common rule is that you can withdraw about 4% a year, so $1,000,000 supports roughly $40,000 of annual income before tax. Working backwards from the income you want is usually more useful than picking a round-number balance.
A third more contributed, and more than double the result. Nearly all of that extra comes from the earliest contributions having ten more years to compound.
What to enter
- Current age and retirement age
- The years of compounding available, which is the most powerful input in the calculation.
- Current savings
- Everything already invested for retirement across 401(k)s, IRAs and taxable accounts.
- Monthly contribution
- Include any employer match. A 50% match on 6% of salary is an immediate return no investment can promise.
- Expected return
- 7% is a common long-run planning figure for a diversified portfolio. Many people lower it as they approach retirement and shift towards bonds.
- Retirement income needed
- In today's money is easiest to think about, but remember to inflate it forward before comparing against a future balance.
What this assumes
Returns are treated as steady. Real markets are not, and a poor decade close to retirement matters far more than one early on.
Social Security and any pension are separate income and reduce what the portfolio has to provide.
How to calculate your retirement savings
Grow the current balance and the contributions forward, then check what income the result supports.
- P
- Current balance
- PMT
- Contribution per period
- r
- Return per period
- n
- Number of periods
Work out the income you want. In today's money. A common starting point is 70-80% of current income, though it depends entirely on whether your housing is paid off and what you plan to do.
Turn it into a target balance. Divide by your withdrawal rate. At 4%, $40,000 of income needs $1,000,000. Subtract expected Social Security first.
Inflate the target forward. The target is in today's money and you will need it in future dollars. At 3% over 30 years the factor is 2.43.
Project what you are on track for. Compound your balance and contributions to your retirement age, then compare. The gap tells you what to change.
See a worked example: why ten years matters more than the contribution
- Contribution
- $500 a month
- Return
- 7% a year
Over 30 years: $180,000 contributed grows to $609,985.
Over 40 years: $240,000 contributed grows to $1,312,407.
A third more paid in, and $702,422 more at the end.
One caution on the second figure: at 3% inflation, $1,312,407 in 40 years buys what $402,327 buys today. The balance is not the plan; the buying power is.
$609,985 over 30 years, $1,312,407 over 40
Frequently asked questions
Work backwards from spending, not from a round number. Take the annual income you want, subtract expected Social Security, and divide the rest by your withdrawal rate.
At 4%, needing $60,000 a year with $24,000 from Social Security leaves $36,000 from the portfolio, so a target of $900,000. That is a far more useful figure than a generic million.
7% is a reasonable long-run planning figure for a diversified stock-heavy portfolio, and around 5% for a more balanced one.
Run a pessimistic scenario as well. A plan that only works at 9% is not a plan, and the closer you are to retiring, the more a bad sequence of returns can cost you.
For most people, yes, as part of the income rather than all of it. It replaces a meaningful share of pre-retirement income, more for lower earners than higher ones.
Get your own estimate from your Social Security statement rather than using an average. Claiming age changes the amount substantially, and delaying to 70 increases the monthly benefit considerably.
No, though the arithmetic is harder and it needs a bigger contribution. Twenty years of compounding still roughly quadruples money at 7%.
Catch-up contributions help: the IRS allows higher 401(k) and IRA limits from age 50. Late starters also often have their peak earning years and a paid-off mortgage ahead of them.
A guideline that withdrawing 4% of your portfolio in the first year, then adjusting that amount for inflation, is unlikely to exhaust it over 30 years.
It comes from research on historical US returns and is a starting point rather than a guarantee. See the [FIRE](/financial/fire-calculator) page for what happens when the retirement is much longer than 30 years.
Both, in a sensible order. Contribute enough to a 401(k) to get the full employer match first, since that is an immediate return nothing else matches.
After that, an [IRA](/financial/ira-calculator) or [Roth IRA](/financial/roth-ira-calculator) usually offers wider investment choice and lower fees. Then go back and fill the 401(k) up to its limit.
Problems people actually run into
Setting the target in today's money and never inflating it
A $1,000,000 target sounds sufficient, and in 30 years at 3% inflation it buys what $411,987 buys today.
Either inflate the target forward or run the whole projection in real terms with a real return. Mixing the two produces a plan that looks funded and is not.
Waiting for a comfortable moment to start
Contributions started ten years later cost far more than they save. $500 a month for 30 years ends at $609,985; the same for 40 ends at $1,312,407.
Even a small amount now beats a larger amount later, because the earliest dollars are the ones with the most time. Starting matters more than the amount you start with.
Results are estimates for general information only and are not professional financial, medical, or legal advice. Read our full disclaimer.
Last updated: September 4, 2026