Retirement Savings Calculator
Before fees. Deliberately yours to choose rather than ours to assume.
Only affects the today's-money figure, not the pot.
Projected pot at retirement
$1,188,181
About $500,665 in today’s money
- You put in$235,000
- Investment growth$953,181
How this was worked out
- Years of saving65 − 30 = 35
- Paid in over that time$25,000 already saved, plus $500 a month = $235,000
- Growth on top$1,188,181 − $235,000 = $953,181 at 7% a year
- What it buys at that point$1,188,181 discounted 35 years at 2.5% = $500,665
A projection, not a forecast, and not financial advice. One steady return every month for decades is a convenience of the arithmetic, not something any market has delivered: the order the good and bad years arrive in changes the answer, and it matters most in the years either side of stopping work. Your monthly saving is held flat for the whole period, so a contribution that rises with your pay finishes well above this. Nothing here counts an employer match, fund fees, a state pension, or what the pot would actually pay you once you stop adding to it.
The second figure is the one that matters: $500,665 in today’s money is what the pot would actually buy, after inflation. Steady returns are assumed, and tax is not modelled.
The worked examples below are in US dollars. The tool itself works in whichever currency you pick above, and never converts between them — what you type is what it does the arithmetic on.
Projecting a pot, and then deflating it
Retirement projections are usually quoted as one big number, and the big number is misleading, because it is expressed in the money of a year that has not happened yet. This calculator shows both figures: the nominal balance you would hold at retirement, and what that balance is worth in today’s money once inflation has been taken out of it. The second number is the one to plan against.
It is aimed at anyone with a pension, a 401(k), an IRA or a plain investment account being fed monthly — the arithmetic is the same wherever the wrapper is.
A worked example: 30 to 65
A 30-year-old with $25,000 saved, adding $500 a month, assuming a 7% annual return and 2.5% inflation, retires at 65 with a projected $1,188,181.10. Of that, $235,000 is money paid in — the original $25,000 plus 420 monthly contributions — and $953,181.10 is growth.
Then apply inflation. Over 35 years at 2.5% a year, prices multiply by 1.025^35 = 2.3732, so that $1.19 million buys what $500,665.14 buys today. The pot is still a good outcome; it is not a million dollars in any sense you can spend.
Both figures move sharply with the assumed return, which is why the number to test is the return rather than the contribution. Run it at 5% and again at 7% before believing either.
How the projection works
The balance compounds monthly: each month it is multiplied by (1 + annual return ÷ 12), then the monthly contribution is added at the end of the month. That runs for (retirement age − current age) × 12 months.
The real-terms figure is the nominal balance divided by (1 + inflation)^years. This is a deflator, not a return adjustment — it converts future dollars into today’s dollars rather than reducing the growth rate. Setting inflation to zero makes the two figures identical, which is a quick way to see exactly how much of the headline number is currency drift.
What a straight-line projection cannot capture
A constant return every month for 35 years is not how markets behave, and the difference is not merely cosmetic. Sequence-of-returns risk means the order of good and bad years matters: a poor decade at the end, when the balance is large, damages the outcome far more than the same decade at the start. A single average rate hides that entirely.
Also outside the model: tax, in every form — contributions relieved at source, growth taxed or sheltered, withdrawals taxed as income — along with employer matching, fund fees charged as a percentage of the balance, state or public pensions, contribution limits, and any increase in your contribution as your salary rises. Real plans also rarely stay 100% in growth assets to the last day; most shift toward bonds near retirement, which lowers the expected return in exactly the years this model assumes it stays flat.
Inflation, and what a pot pays as income
What inflation rate should I use?
Most developed-economy central banks target around 2%, and long-run realised inflation has been a little above that. Using 2.5% is a reasonable middle. The point is not to predict it precisely but to stop reading a future balance as though it were spending money today.
How much is the pot actually worth as income?
A common rule of thumb is that around 4% of the starting balance can be withdrawn in the first year and then adjusted for inflation, with a reasonable chance of lasting 30 years. On the real-terms $500,665 above, that is roughly $20,000 a year in today’s money — worth knowing before the seven-figure headline sets an expectation.
Does starting ten years earlier really matter that much?
Yes, and it is the largest single lever here. Contributions made early get compounded for the whole run, so the first decade of saving typically contributes more to the final balance than the last decade does, despite being identical money.
Should a state or public pension go into this?
No. This projects a pot you own, and a state pension is an income stream rather than a balance. Convert the pot to an annual income first, then add the state figure to that.
What does an employer match do to the projection?
It raises the monthly contribution, so type the combined figure rather than your own share. A match of five per cent against a five per cent contribution doubles what goes in every month, and every one of those dollars compounds for the whole run — which is why an unclaimed match is the most expensive thing on this page.