Retirement Calculator
Project your retirement nest egg from your current savings and monthly contributions.
How to use
- Enter your current age, retirement age, savings, and monthly contribution.
- Enter your expected annual return.
- Click Calculate to see your projected nest egg, total contributions, and growth.
Estimates only — not financial advice. Actual returns vary and past performance does not guarantee future results. Verify important decisions with a qualified professional.
What Is a Retirement Calculator?
A retirement calculator projects how much your savings could grow to by the time you retire, starting from what you have today and adding your monthly contributions and investment growth year after year. Retirement is the largest financial goal most people ever fund, and it is also the most abstract — decades away, denominated in six or seven figures, and dependent on habits formed now. A projection converts that abstraction into a single estimated balance at your retirement age, and shows how powerfully the inputs you control — how much you save and how long you save it — drive the outcome.
Two forces do the work. Contributions are the fuel: every monthly deposit adds principal. Compounding is the multiplier: returns are earned on contributions and on previous returns, so the account's growth accelerates with time. The calculator combines both at your assumed rate of return, which is why starting at 25 with modest contributions so often beats starting at 40 with larger ones — the early money gets more years of compounding.
How to Use the Retirement Calculator
- Enter your current age and the age at which you plan to retire.
- Enter your current retirement savings across all accounts (401(k), IRA, and other investments earmarked for retirement).
- Enter your total monthly contribution, including any employer match.
- Enter an expected annual return and click Calculate to see your projected balance at retirement and how it is split between contributions and growth.
How Much Will You Actually Need?
A common planning shortcut is the income-replacement guideline — aiming to replace roughly 70–80% of your pre-retirement income per year in retirement, since payroll taxes, saving contributions, and work costs disappear while healthcare costs may rise. Another is the 25-times rule: a portfolio of about 25 times your desired annual spending supports withdrawals of roughly 4% a year under the well-known 4% guideline for a typical retirement horizon. Neither rule is personal advice, but both turn "enough" into a target number you can compare with this calculator's projection.
Tips for Closing a Retirement Gap
- Time is the strongest lever: if the projection falls short, retiring a year or two later both adds contributions and removes years the fund must support you.
- Capture the full employer match before anything else — it is an instant 100% return on those dollars, which no market assumption can match.
- Recheck the projection yearly with fresh balances; plans drift, and small course corrections beat late rescues.
What rate of return should I assume for retirement planning?
Long-run averages for a diversified stock portfolio are often modeled at 6–8% for planning, with lower figures for bond-heavy or conservative portfolios. Because the projection is very sensitive to this input, run it at a cautious rate as well as an optimistic one, and make sure your plan survives the cautious case.
Does the projection include Social Security?
No. This calculator projects your personal savings only. Social Security benefits will add income in retirement for most US workers, and pensions too where they exist — treat those as additional to the balance shown here when you estimate your total retirement income.
How much should I be saving each month?
A widely used guideline is to save 12–15% of gross income (including employer contributions) starting early in a career; starting later calls for a higher rate. The practical method is to work backwards: set a target balance, enter it as your goal, and adjust the monthly contribution in this calculator until the projection reaches it.
Is the projected amount what I will actually have?
No projection can promise that. The calculator assumes steady contributions and a constant return, while real careers and markets vary. Its value is in comparing choices — starting now versus later, saving a little more versus a little less — not in predicting an exact figure decades ahead.