Last updated: August 16, 2026
Free Retirement Calculator: How Much Do You Need?
Enter your current savings, monthly contribution, expected return, and years until retirement to see your projected balance — plus what that balance could provide as annual income at a withdrawal rate you choose. See our 4% rule guide for the research behind the default withdrawal rate.
How to Use This Calculator
- Enter your current retirement savings — this can be $0 if you're just starting out.
- Enter the monthly contribution you plan to add consistently, including any employer match.
- Enter an expected annual return — this is an assumption, not a guarantee, since actual investment returns vary.
- Enter how many years until you plan to retire.
- The withdrawal rate defaults to 4%, the classic starting point — adjust it to see how a more conservative or more flexible rate changes your estimated annual income.
What a Growth Curve Actually Looks Like
Illustrative example using the calculator's default assumptions, verified by direct calculation. Enter your own numbers above for a personalized projection.
Notice how the curve bends upward rather than climbing in a straight line — that's compound growth, and it's why the later years of consistent contributions add far more to your final balance than the early years, even though the contribution amount never changes.
A Note on the Assumptions
This calculator uses fixed assumptions — a constant return rate and constant contributions — to illustrate the mechanics of long-term growth clearly. Real investment returns vary year to year rather than compounding smoothly, and few people contribute the exact same amount every month for decades without a raise, a career change, or a temporary pause. Use this as a planning tool to understand the shape of long-term growth, not as a guaranteed prediction of your actual future balance. The withdrawal rate estimate similarly reflects a simplified starting point — see our 4% rule guide for the fuller research behind different withdrawal rate assumptions and what they don't account for, like taxes and healthcare costs.
Don't Forget Your Employer Match
If your employer matches a portion of your 401(k) contributions, include that match in the "monthly contribution" field — it's real money added to your balance every pay period, and leaving it out will meaningfully understate your actual projected growth. For example, if you contribute $400 a month and your employer adds another $200 through a match, enter $600 as your total monthly contribution, not just your own $400. See our 401(k) guide for how matching typically works and why it's worth contributing at least enough to capture the full match before directing extra savings elsewhere.
Running Multiple Scenarios
Because every field updates the result instantly, this calculator is most useful when you run it several times with different assumptions rather than accepting a single projection at face value. A few comparisons worth trying:
- Adjust your monthly contribution up by $100 or $200 to see how a modest, sustainable increase compounds over your full timeline — this is often a more encouraging exercise than it sounds, given how much later-year growth matters.
- Try a more conservative return rate (5% or 6% instead of 7%) alongside your original assumption, to see a realistic range rather than a single optimistic number.
- Shorten your years-until-retirement field to see how retiring a few years earlier changes both your projected balance and the contribution increase that would be needed to compensate.
- Adjust the withdrawal rate between roughly 3.9% and 4.7% to see the same balance translate into different estimated annual income figures — see our 4% rule guide for why credible research currently disagrees on the exact safe number.
Common Mistakes When Projecting Retirement Savings
- Using an unrealistically high return assumption to make a projection feel more comfortable, rather than testing a range of reasonable rates.
- Forgetting to include an employer match in the monthly contribution field, understating actual projected growth.
- Treating a single projection as a guarantee rather than a planning estimate that should be revisited as your actual income, savings, and market conditions evolve.
- Ignoring taxes on the estimated annual income figure, particularly for a traditional (pre-tax) account, where withdrawals are taxable and the spendable amount is lower than the raw figure shown.
A Worked Example
Consider someone age 30 with $10,000 already saved, contributing $500 a month (including any employer match), expecting a 7% average annual return, and planning to retire in 35 years at age 65. Entering these numbers produces a projected balance of roughly $1,015,000 — of which about $220,000 comes from direct contributions and the remaining $795,000 comes from investment growth. At a 4% withdrawal rate, that balance would support an estimated $40,600 a year in retirement income, before accounting for Social Security, taxes, or any other income sources. Running the same scenario with a more conservative 3.9% withdrawal rate instead lowers the estimated income to roughly $39,600 — a useful reminder that even a small change in withdrawal rate assumption shifts the final number, which is exactly why comparing a few different assumptions side by side, as suggested above, gives a more realistic picture than trusting a single result.
Frequently Asked Questions
What return rate should I use?
There's no single correct answer, since actual returns depend on your specific investments and the market performance over your timeframe. A commonly used long-term historical average for a diversified stock-heavy portfolio is around 7%, but it's worth running the calculator at a few different rates to see a range of outcomes.
Why does the calculator default to a 4% withdrawal rate?
4% is the classic starting point from retirement withdrawal research, though current research disagrees on the exact safe number — see our 4% rule guide for why estimates now range from roughly 3.9% to 4.7% depending on the research method used.
Does this calculator account for Social Security or other income?
No — it projects your portfolio and the income it alone could provide. If you expect Social Security, a pension, or other income in retirement, your portfolio may not need to cover your full spending need on its own.
Does this calculator save my data?
No — it runs entirely in your browser, and the numbers you enter aren't sent to or stored on our servers.
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Where to Go Next
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Turn the Number Into a Plan
A projection is only useful if it changes what you actually do this month — whether that's starting a contribution, increasing one, or simply confirming you're already on track. Revisit this calculator periodically as your income, savings, and timeline change.
Not contributing to a retirement account yet? Our 401(k) guide covers how to get started.