Retirement Calculator
Retirement Calculator
Estimate whether your current savings, income, and withdrawal assumptions can support your long-term plan.
This calculator is a quick directional check, not a comprehensive plan. It models a single set of return and inflation assumptions against your inputs and tells you how long the projected portfolio lasts under those assumptions. Real retirement plans need to consider sequence-of-returns risk, tax drag, Social Security timing, and IRMAA — which a single calculator cannot.
The most useful question to ask the calculator is not whether you have enough money — it is whether your assumptions are reasonable. Most people input return assumptions that are too high and inflation assumptions that are too low, both of which make the picture look better than it is. The discipline of stress-testing your assumptions is more valuable than the specific number the calculator returns.
How to Use It
Enter your current age, target retirement age, current portfolio balance, annual contributions, expected withdrawal in retirement, and your assumptions for return and inflation. The output tells you the projected portfolio trajectory and the year the portfolio is depleted under those assumptions.
Assumptions and Limits
- Deterministic projection — no Monte Carlo or sequence-of-returns modeling
- Single asset class assumption — does not model asset allocation drift
- Pre-tax / after-tax not modeled — withdrawals are nominal
- Social Security, pensions, and other income streams not included
- Results are illustrative only — not a financial plan or recommendation
What a Real Plan Adds
A full retirement income plan models the same household across hundreds of return paths (Monte Carlo or historical), incorporates tax brackets and IRMAA thresholds explicitly, sequences withdrawals across taxable / tax-deferred / Roth accounts, and integrates Social Security claiming ages and any pension or deferred-comp income streams. It also updates every year as your numbers and the tax code change. A static calculator cannot do any of those things, which is why it is a starting point, not a destination.
Common Calculator Mistakes
Three input errors show up in nearly every retirement calculator we see clients use. First, return assumptions that bake in 8-10% nominal returns indefinitely — the long-run historical average for diversified equities, applied to a portfolio that is usually less equity-heavy in retirement than the assumption implies. Second, inflation assumptions stuck at 2-3% even as the recent decade has run higher. Third, withdrawal numbers that quote pre-tax dollars rather than the actual after-tax cash flow the household needs to spend.
Adjusting just those three assumptions to more realistic ranges (5-6% real return, 3-4% inflation, after-tax spending) usually changes the answer from confident to closer to the line. That recalibration alone is worth running through the calculator.