Retirement Calculator
Find out if you're on track to retire and how long your savings will last
Results & Details
// Progress Toward Retirement Goal
// Retirement Drawdown
Year-by-Year Projection
| Age | Contributions | Growth | Balance | Phase |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🧓 Calculate above to see your projection | ||||
How to Use the Retirement Calculator
Enter your current age, planned retirement age, life expectancy, current savings, monthly contributions, and expected investment return. Then set your desired monthly spending in retirement to see if your savings will last and whether you're on track.
The 4% Rule
A widely used guideline is the 4% rule — in retirement, you can withdraw 4% of your savings per year (adjusted for inflation) and your pot should last at least 30 years. To find how much you need to retire, multiply your desired annual spending by 25. For example, £3,000/month = £36,000/year × 25 = £900,000 target.
Pre vs Post-Retirement Returns
During accumulation (working years), you can typically afford more risk — stocks and growth assets — aiming for 6–10% returns. In retirement (drawdown phase), most advisors recommend shifting to more conservative assets (bonds, income funds) targeting 3–5% to reduce volatility and preserve capital.
Why Inflation Matters So Much in Retirement
Inflation compounds against you in retirement. At 3% inflation, your purchasing power halves every 24 years. This calculator adjusts your spending target for inflation so you can see what your monthly spending in retirement will really cost in future money.
Retirement Math, Without the Mystery
Built and verified by Andrius R. · Updated June 2026
Retirement planning reduces to two questions: how big a pot do I need, and what do I have to save to get there. Both have well-established answers — approximate, but far better than guessing.
Question 1: How much is enough? The 4% rule
The most widely used starting point is the 4% rule, based on the 1990s "Trinity study" research: a diversified portfolio has historically supported withdrawing 4% of its starting value per year, adjusted for inflation, for a 30-year retirement. Flip it around and you get the 25× rule: you need roughly 25 times your desired annual withdrawal.
Want $50,000/year from your portfolio (on top of any state pension or Social Security)? Target: 50,000 × 25 = $1,250,000. Want $30,000/year? You need ~$750,000.
The 4% rule is a planning anchor, not a law. Critics note that longer retirements, low-yield decades, or bad early-years markets ("sequence of returns risk") argue for 3–3.5%; flexible spenders can often go higher. Use it to get within range, then refine.
Question 2: What do you need to save?
| Start age | Years to 65 | Contributed | Value at 65 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 35 | $210,000 | ~$900,000 |
| 40 | 25 | $150,000 | ~$405,000 |
The ten-year head start more than doubles the outcome. If you start at 40 and want the age-30 result, you'd need to save roughly $1,100/month instead of $500 — the cost of delay, made visible.
Don't plan in today's dollars without saying so
$1 million in 30 years is not $1 million today. At 2.5% inflation, it buys what about $477,000 buys now. Two clean ways to handle this: either run the calculator with a real (after-inflation) return — e.g. 7% nominal − 2.5% inflation ≈ 4.5% — and read the result in today's money, or use nominal returns and mentally discount the final figure. Mixing the two is the most common retirement-math error there is.
Order of operations for retirement saving
- Capture any employer match first. A typical 50–100% match is an instant, guaranteed return no investment can beat.
- Kill high-interest debt. Paying off a 22% credit card outperforms any realistic portfolio.
- Max tax-advantaged accounts (401(k)/IRA in the US, workplace pension/ISA in the UK) before taxable investing — the tax drag difference compounds for decades.
- Automate it. Savings rates that depend on monthly willpower lose to savings rates that happen by direct debit.
Benchmarks: are you on track?
A common rule of thumb (popularized by Fidelity): aim for 1× your salary saved by 30, 3× by 40, 6× by 50, 8× by 60, 10× by 67. These assume retirement at 67 with a roughly similar lifestyle. Behind on the benchmarks? The levers, in order of power: save more, retire later, spend less in retirement. Investment returns are the lever you control least, despite getting the most attention.
// The 4% Rule
Multiply your desired annual spending by 25 to get your retirement target. £2,500/mo = £750,000 needed.
// Start Now
Every decade you delay roughly halves what you'll have. Starting at 25 vs 35 can mean double the final pot.
// State Pension
Don't forget state/social pension income — it reduces how much your private pot needs to cover each month.
// 15% Rule
Many advisors suggest saving 15% of gross income for retirement including any employer match contributions.