Retirement Calculator

The most common rule of thumb is to accumulate 25 times your annual expenses by retirement, which supports a 4% annual withdrawal rate. If you plan to spend $50,000 per year, you need approximately $1,250,000. For longer retirements of 30 or more years, many planners recommend 28 to 33 times expenses, corresponding to a 3% to 3.5% withdrawal rate.

A FIRE calculator answers: when can I retire, given my savings rate? The retirement date is calculated based on your inputs. A retirement calculator answers: will I have enough by a specific target age, and how long will my savings last in retirement? This calculator assumes a fixed retirement date and models both the accumulation and drawdown phases. Use the FIRE calculator if your goal is to find the earliest possible retirement date.

Most financial planners recommend using a lower return assumption in retirement than during your working years, because retirees typically shift toward a more conservative portfolio. A common assumption is 4% to 6% for a balanced retiree portfolio. The default in this calculator is 5%, which reflects a moderate mix of stocks and bonds. Adjust it based on how you plan to invest your savings in retirement.

A common planning assumption is to age 90, which covers most scenarios without excessive over-saving. If longevity runs in your family or you retire early, planning to 95 or even 100 is prudent. Running out of money in your 80s is a serious risk: it is safer to over-plan and potentially leave a small estate than to under-plan and exhaust savings while still alive.

If the calculator shows your savings depleting before your life expectancy, you have several levers: save more each month, retire later, reduce planned expenses, or accept a higher withdrawal rate with the understanding that you may need to cut spending in later years. Social Security, pension income, or part-time work in early retirement can also extend how long your portfolio lasts.

For simplicity, use after-tax numbers throughout: your current savings in after-tax terms, your monthly contributions in after-tax dollars, and your annual expenses as the amount you actually plan to spend. If most of your savings are in a traditional 401(k) or IRA, your withdrawals will be taxed as ordinary income. In that case, reduce your post-retirement return to account for taxes, or increase your annual expenses figure to reflect the gross withdrawal needed.

Inflation erodes the purchasing power of fixed withdrawals over time. A $50,000 annual budget today buys less in 20 years at 3% inflation. This calculator uses nominal returns and nominal expenses without explicit inflation adjustment. To account for inflation conservatively, reduce your expected returns by 2 to 3 percentage points, which effectively converts them to real (inflation-adjusted) returns.

No. This calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your financial numbers are never sent to our servers, stored in a database, or shared with any third party. You can use it freely without creating an account.