Retirement Calculator

Plan Your Retirement with Real Numbers

Retirement may feel decades away, but the math behind a comfortable exit from the workforce starts with one honest estimate. Whether you are maxing out a 401(k), chasing financial independence, or trying to close a pension shortfall, guessing your number is not a plan. Our Retirement Calculator turns your age, savings, spending, and market assumptions into a concrete nest-egg target—and then shows you exactly where you stand today.

What This Calculator Does

The tool applies the 4% rule, a retirement guideline rooted in historical portfolio research, to estimate the lump sum you will need. It inflates your current monthly expenses to your planned retirement age, converts that into an annual figure, and multiplies by 25. Then it projects your existing savings and ongoing contributions forward using compound annual returns. You get three clear figures: total needed, projected savings, and the gap or surplus. A shortfall means you need to save more or retire later; a surplus gives you a buffer for unexpected expenses or a higher withdrawal rate.

How to Use It

1. Enter your current age and the age you plan to retire.
2. Input your monthly expenses in today's dollars.
3. Add your current retirement savings and your monthly contribution.
4. Set your expected annual investment return and long-term inflation rate.
5. Review the results and adjust savings or retirement age until the shortfall disappears.

Common Use Cases

FIRE planners use aggressive savings rates to compress a 40-year career into 15 or 20 years. Traditional 401(k) savers check whether their contribution plus employer match is on track for age 65. Couples combine two portfolios to see the household picture. Pension holders subtract expected monthly pension income from expenses to find the remaining gap that personal savings must fill.

Worked Example

Imagine you are 35, plan to retire at 65, spend $4,000 a month today, already have $100,000 saved, and contribute $1,000 a month. With a 7% annual return and 3% inflation, your future monthly spending at 65 rises to roughly $9,700. That means you need about $2.9 million. Your projected savings reach about $1.7 million, leaving a shortfall of roughly $1.2 million. To close it, you could raise monthly savings to about $2,100 or delay retirement by roughly five years.

Tips for Better Results

• Start early—compound growth does the heaviest lifting in the final decade before retirement.
• Re-run the calculator annually with updated balances, spending, and goals.
• Max out tax-advantaged accounts first, but keep some flexibility in taxable brokerage accounts for early withdrawals if needed.