Retirement Calculator
Project your retirement savings from your current age, savings, monthly contributions and expected return.
Written by Rahman · Last reviewed
Quick answer
A 30-year-old retiring at 65 with $20,000 already saved and $500 a month at 7% is projected to reach about $1.13 million, $230,000 of it contributions and roughly $900,000 growth. The result is highly sensitive to the return and inflation you assume, and to how early you start: money paid in during the first decade has the longest to compound and typically outweighs much larger amounts paid in late.
- Initial savings20,000.00 (2.6%)
- Future contributions180,000.00 (23.3%)
- Investment growth572,315.45 (74.1%)
- Total772,315.45
Results are estimates for general guidance and are not financial, tax or legal advice. Except where a calculator names a currency, figures carry no currency of their own: put in pounds and you get pounds back, put in rupees and you get rupees. Figures depend on the assumptions you enter and on rates that change over time. Check current rates and speak to a qualified adviser before acting on them.
About the Retirement Calculator
Retirement planning is the process of estimating how much money you will need after you stop working and building that nest egg through savings and investment growth over your working years.
This calculator projects the retirement corpus you could accumulate from your current savings plus regular monthly contributions, compounded at an expected annual return until your chosen retirement age.
Corpus = Savings × (1 + r)^t + Monthly × [((1 + i)^n − 1) / i]
r is the annual return, t is years to retirement, i is the monthly return, and n is the number of months of contributions.
Take a 30-year-old planning to retire at 65, with $20,000 already saved and contributing $500 every month at an assumed 7% annual return. The calculator projects a retirement corpus of about $1.13 million, built from roughly $230,000 of total contributions plus $900,000 of investment growth. Wait until age 40 to start the same plan and the corpus shrinks to around $520,000. Waiting ten years costs about $611,000 of total corpus ($551,000 of it lost growth), even though you only saved $60,000 less.
The withdrawal rate decides the target, not the return rate
Most attention in retirement planning goes to the return assumption, but the number that really sets the size of the target is how fast you draw the pot down. It turns the income you need into the savings you need, and small changes to it move the target a long way.
The two are simply reciprocals. A 4% withdrawal rate means the pot must be 25 times annual spending; 3% means 33 times; 5% means 20 times. Funding $40,000 a year therefore requires $1,000,000 at 4%, $1,333,000 at 3%, or $800,000 at 5%. The same portfolio gives you 25% less income at 3% than at 4%, without anything about the investments changing.
- The widely cited 4% figure comes from studies of historical US market data over 30-year retirements with a stock-and-bond portfolio. It's a rate that held up in the past, not a law.
- Longer retirements need lower rates. A pot that must last 40 or 50 years cannot safely support the same rate as one that must last 30.
- Fees come out of the same budget. A 1% annual charge on a portfolio drawn at 4% consumes a quarter of the income.
Treat the withdrawal rate as the main assumption to test rather than a setting to accept, and see what happens to the target when you move it by a single percentage point.
Averages hide the risk that actually matters
A projection built on an average yearly return quietly assumes the return arrives smoothly. Real markets don't work that way, and once you're drawing money out, the order the returns come in matters as much as their average.
That's because you keep withdrawing whatever the markets are doing. Selling to fund your spending during an early downturn means those investments are gone for good and can't share in the recovery. Two retirements with identical average returns can end very differently depending on whether the bad years fell at the start or the end. This is sequence-of-returns risk, and it is invisible in any single-average projection.
- The years immediately before and after retiring are the most exposed, because the pot is at its largest and withdrawals have begun.
- Holding a cash or bond buffer to cover early spending avoids selling equities into a fall.
- Flexible spending (trimming withdrawals in poor years) has a larger effect on portfolio survival than most changes to asset allocation.
The projection above shows one path built on a steady return. Treat it as a middle estimate rather than a forecast, and test it by lowering the return, raising inflation and stretching the time horizon.
Cost of starting late: same $500/month at 7% return
| Start age | Years saved | Total contributed | Corpus at 65 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | 40 years | $240,000 | ~$1,310,000 |
| 30 | 35 years | $210,000 | ~$903,000 |
| 35 | 30 years | $180,000 | ~$611,000 |
| 40 | 25 years | $150,000 | ~$406,000 |
| 45 | 20 years | $120,000 | ~$262,000 |
Every decade you delay roughly halves your retirement corpus, the single most expensive financial procrastination there is.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I save for retirement?
⌄
A common guideline is to target a corpus that can replace 70–80% of your pre-retirement income. The exact figure depends on your expected lifestyle, expenses and life expectancy.
Why start saving early?
⌄
Early contributions compound for far longer. Starting in your twenties rather than your forties can multiply your final corpus several times over for the same monthly amount.
Does this account for inflation?
⌄
This tool projects nominal value. To judge real purchasing power, also use the Inflation Calculator to see what your corpus will be worth in today’s money.
What return should I assume?
⌄
Use a conservative, realistic long-term average for your mix of investments. It is safer to under-estimate returns than to over-estimate them.
Should I prioritise debt repayment or retirement savings?
⌄
Pay off high-interest debt (above ~8% APR) first because it loses you more than most investments earn. For lower-interest debt, split contributions between debt and retirement to keep compounding working in your favour.
What is the 4% rule?
⌄
A widely used rule of thumb suggesting that withdrawing 4% of your retirement corpus in the first year (then adjusting for inflation) gives a high probability of the money lasting at least 30 years. So a $1M corpus supports about $40,000 a year.
How do employer matches affect the plan?
⌄
Employer matches on retirement accounts are effectively free money. Always contribute enough to capture the full match. Add the matched amount to the monthly contribution in this calculator to see the true impact.
Sources
- Morningstar — The Good News on Safe Withdrawal Rates — Backs the claim above that the 4% figure is an observed survival rate rather than a law: Morningstar recalculates it annually and its own estimate has ranged from 3.3% to 4.0% depending on prevailing yields, at a 90% probability of funds remaining across a 30-year retirement. Does not cover the longer 40-to-50-year horizons this page also discusses, which is a separate argument for a lower rate.