Retirement Savings Calculator

A projection that ends with a balance answers half the question. A million dollars means nothing without two further facts: what it will buy after decades of inflation, and what income it can actually support. This calculator reports the balance, its purchasing power, and the capital the income you want would require — then the distance between them.

The target is the part most calculators get cheap. The common shortcut divides the income you need by 4% and calls the answer a target. That embeds a withdrawal-rate rule as though it were arithmetic. This page instead prices the retirement years directly: your spending target and your other income are projected to each retirement year at your inflation assumption, the difference is what the portfolio must fund, and each of those years is discounted back to the retirement date at a retirement-phase return you set separately. The sum is the target, and every row of it is shown.

The difference is not academic. On the default figures the row-by-row method produces $1,603,943 where dividing by 4% produces $1,887,811 — $283,868 apart, on identical inputs. Neither is a fact about the future; only one of them tells you what it assumed.

It stops at the retirement date on purpose. Sizing the capital an income stream needs is a different problem from testing whether a balance survives being spent — that depends on withdrawal timing, frequency and the order returns arrive in, and the periodic withdrawals calculator models it properly. Splitting them keeps each answer honest.

Read the real balance before the nominal one. Over thirty years at 2.5% inflation, purchasing power roughly halves: a projected $1,250,483 is worth $596,159 in today's money. The nominal figure is correct and flattering; the real one is comparable to the life you live now.

The growth share tells you how much of the projection you control. Here $902,483 of a $1,250,483 balance — 72.2% — is assumed investment growth rather than money you deposit. That is not a reason to abandon the plan. It is a reason to read the sensitivity matrix, where a point and a half either way on the return moves the outcome by more than half a million dollars.

The funded percentage is the readiness number. 78.0% funded is a different message from a $353,460 shortfall, and both are true. The percentage tells you how close the plan is; the dollar figure tells you what closing it costs.

Two levers are reported rather than described. The required contribution is solved from the schedule — $1,131.26 a month instead of $800 — and the retirement age at which the current plan first reaches its target is searched directly: age 69 rather than 65. Both move the same gap, and seeing them side by side is usually more useful than either alone.

Watch the rate convention. This tool does not ask you for a compounding frequency, so the 6.5% you enter is the effective annual return: twelve monthly periods compound back to exactly 6.5%, and switching to quarterly or annual contributions does not quietly change the return you assumed. Where a Quantus tool does ask for a compounding frequency — the two future value calculators — the rate you enter is nominal at that frequency instead, and both figures are shown.

The accumulation schedule is the model, and the source of truth for every accumulation figure published here. Within each period growth is credited first and the contribution added afterwards — the end-of-period convention every Quantus accumulation tool uses. An annual increase steps at the start of each subsequent saving year and applies to the combined contribution.

The expected return is treated as an effective annual rate, the site-wide convention for any Quantus tool that does not ask you for a compounding frequency. The period rate is its exact n-th root, so the periods compound back to precisely the figure entered and changing the contribution frequency does not silently change the annual economic return.

The capital target runs in the other direction, and never touches a withdrawal-rate rule. Each retirement year is priced separately, then discounted back to the retirement date. The sum of the present-value column is the target, which is why that column is printed in full.

On the 4% rule: it is a useful piece of shorthand with a specific origin — Bengen's 1994 study of historical US return sequences — and it is not a law. Dividing income by 4% implies a particular horizon, asset mix and success criterion, none of which you stated. This page therefore uses it nowhere in the arithmetic. If you want the shortcut for comparison, the first-retirement-year need divided by 4% is easy to compute from the figures shown; the point is that you can see which assumptions produced which number.

On other retirement income: it is projected at the same inflation rate as your spending. A pension fixed in nominal terms does not behave that way and would be overstated by this treatment — enter a lower today's-money figure, or leave it out and treat it separately. Quantus does not estimate Social Security, pension or annuity amounts, and adding a benefit estimator here would mean pretending to a rules model this page does not contain.

On what is not modelled: no tax, no fees, no contribution limits, no employer match formula, no catch-up rules and no required minimum distributions. The employer field is a flat amount per period precisely so the page stays account-agnostic.

Take a 35-year-old with $60,000 saved, contributing $800 a month to age 65, assuming a 6.5% return and 2.5% inflation, planning to age 92. They want $60,000 a year in today's money and expect $24,000 of other retirement income, with the portfolio earning 4.5% once they stop working.

Accumulation first. Thirty years of $800 a month is $288,000 of contributions. The projected balance is $1,250,483, of which $902,483 — 72.2% — is assumed growth rather than money deposited. In today's money that balance is worth $596,159. The 6.5% entered is the effective annual return, so the monthly period rate is its twelfth root.

Now the target, built rather than assumed. $60,000 less $24,000 leaves $36,000 a year the portfolio must fund, in today's money. By the first retirement year that is $75,512, and by age 91 it has grown to $143,496. Undiscounted, those 27 years total $2,862,827. Discounted back to the retirement date at 4.5%, they are worth $1,603,943 — that is the capital target, and it is the sum of the present-value column in the table on the calculator.

Against a projected $1,250,483 that leaves a shortfall of $353,460, or 78.0% funded. Closing it needs $1,131.26 a month rather than $800 — $331.26 more, a 41.4% increase. The solver finds that by bisection over the schedule in 18 steps; because the contribution is level here, the annuity closed form can be computed independently and returns $1,131.26 as well. Re-running the whole schedule at the solved figure lands $3.04 above target.

Working longer is the other lever, and it is searched rather than guessed: on the current $800 a month the plan first reaches its target at age 69.

Two assumptions deserve a second look. Dividing the first-year need by 4% would have produced a $1,887,811 target — $283,868 more than the row-by-row method, because a 27-year stream discounted at 4.5% simply does not require as much as a percentage rule implies. And the retirement-phase return does most of the remaining work: at 3% the target is $1,915,228, at 6% it is $1,363,224. Choosing that one input moves the target by more than half a million dollars.

The table below isolates the accumulation assumption instead. The target does not move across these rows — only the projection does.