Retirement Withdrawal Calculator
How long your savings last once you start spending them, with the withdrawal rising each year with inflation instead of held flat to flatter the answer.
How this is calculated
The withdrawal rises with inflation every year, which is the single most important choice in this model and the one most free tools get wrong without telling you. Year one takes the spending you entered less your other income. Every year after takes that same figure grown at 2.5%, or whatever you set it to. Hold the withdrawal flat in nominal terms instead, as plenty of calculators quietly do, and you are assuming your standard of living falls every year for thirty years.
Order of operations. The withdrawal comes out at the start of the year and only the remainder earns the return. Taking it at the end would flatter the answer by a full year of growth on money you had already spent, and at 5% that is not a rounding error.
The second answer solves for the spending level that lasts exactly the number of years you asked for, by bisection against the same year-by-year run. Enter $60,000 and it tells you what you could have spent instead.
Other income is fixed in real terms, so it climbs with inflation alongside your spending. That approximates the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment closely enough for planning. A pension with no indexation behaves quite differently and this doesn't model it.
Not modelled. Tax of any kind. Variable returns, and the sequence risk that arrives with them. Spending that changes shape as you age. Required minimum distributions, which the IRS pulls out of the account from 73 or 75 whether you want them or not: see the RMD calculator. Long-term care. Annuities. One partner dying. The horizon stops at 60 years.
A withdrawal that doesn't rise with inflation is a pay cut you agreed to
Every drawdown tool makes one choice that matters more than all of its inputs put together, and most of them never tell you which way they made it. Does the withdrawal rise with inflation? At 2.5% a year the two answers pull apart quickly.
If it doesn't rise, the tool has assumed you spend the same number of dollars in year thirty as in year one, which at 2.5% inflation is roughly half as much in real terms. That is a slow cut to your standard of living, presented as a plan. It also makes the money appear to last a good deal longer than it will.
This one raises the withdrawal by your 2.5% every year, so its answers come out harsher than the tools that don't.
If you would genuinely spend less as you age, and there's real evidence that many people do, then lower the $60,000 spending figure yourself and watch what it does to the horizon. Don't let a calculator make that assumption for you in silence.
The 4% rule was a floor test, not a recommendation
The best-known number in retirement planning came out of research into historical US market returns. The finding was narrow. A portfolio you draw 4% from in year one, then that same dollar amount adjusted for inflation every year after, survived thirty years across the historical starting points studied.
Three things fall out of the retelling.
- It was a worst-case test and not a target. The rate was picked because it would have survived the worst starting points on record. Across most periods, a good deal more would have worked fine.
- It assumed one portfolio and a thirty-year horizon. Retire at 55 with forty years to fund and you are asking a different question.
- It assumed no fees at all. Real fees come straight off the sustainable rate, dollar for dollar.
Whether 4% still holds is genuinely contested, and nobody arguing it is a fool. One camp says less, on higher valuations and lower expected bond returns than the periods behind the original work. The other says more, because real spending tends to sag in later retirement and the rule was aimed at the worst case on purpose.
Both cases are serious, and both are honestly argued.
Here is where this page lands. 4% is a good first number and a poor last one. Treat it as an opening bid, run this again every few years with the balance you actually have, and be ready to trim spending in a bad decade instead of holding the line to the last dollar.
What nobody can tell you, and I include myself, is which camp turns out to be right. That depends on the next thirty years of returns, and those haven't happened. Which is why the withdrawal rate here is a box you fill in, not a constant welded in at 4%.
Three things the arithmetic can't see
The same balance asked the other way round, what it pays a month rather than how long it survives, is a separate calculation with three answers.
Sequence of returns is the big one. A single fixed 5% assumes every year is the average year, and real markets hand you an order instead. While you're saving, the order barely matters. Once you're withdrawing it matters enormously: a bad first few years means selling more units at low prices to fund the same $60,000 of spending and the account may never recover even when the long-run average turns out fine. Two retirements with identical average returns can finish decades apart.
Tax is the second. Withdrawals from a pre-tax plan are ordinary income to the IRS, so if you typed an after-tax spending figure the account empties sooner than the chart says. The withdrawal calculator shows what a given withdrawal costs after federal tax.
Required distributions are the third. From 73 or 75, depending on your birth year, the IRS makes money leave the account whether you need it or not, and it's taxed on the way out. That doesn't change how long the money lasts. It changes the tax you pay getting there. The RMD calculator does that sum.
Trust the gap between two runs, not the year it prints
Read a projection like this for the difference it shows, and never for the date. Spending $60,000 against $55,000, retiring at 65 against 67, earning 5% against 4%: those comparisons survive even though the absolute answer doesn't, because the same simplifications sit on both sides of the subtraction and cancel.
If you're still saving, look elsewhere. The 401(k) calculator that builds the balance up and the contribution planner answer that question. Both assume a higher return than the 5% here, because a portfolio you're still feeding can carry more risk.
Frequently asked questions
How long will my retirement savings last?
Four things decide it: the balance, what you spend from it, what it earns, and whether your spending rises with inflation. The last one moves the answer more than people expect. A withdrawal held flat in dollar terms is a withdrawal that shrinks every year in real terms, and any calculator doing that quietly produces a longer, friendlier answer than you'll live through. At 2.5% inflation it runs to years.
What is the 4% rule?
A finding from research into historical US market returns. A portfolio you withdraw 4% from in the first year, then that amount adjusted for inflation each year after, survived a 30-year retirement in the historical periods studied. It's a research result, not a law and not a promise. It assumed a particular portfolio mix, a 30-year horizon, US data and no fees, and changing any one of those moves the number.
Is 4% still a safe withdrawal rate?
The 4% rule is genuinely contested, and honest people land on both sides. The case for less rests on higher valuations and lower expected bond returns than the historical periods behind the original work. The case for more is that retirees don't actually spend at a constant inflation-adjusted rate, since spending tends to fall late on, and that the rule deliberately targeted the worst historical case. Nobody has settled it. This calculator lets you set the 4% yourself instead of deciding for you.
Does this account for tax on withdrawals?
No. Withdrawals from a pre-tax 401(k) are ordinary income to the IRS, so enter your spending as a pre-tax figure or the account will run dry sooner than shown. To see what one specific withdrawal costs after federal tax, use the withdrawal calculator. State tax isn't modelled anywhere on this site.
What is sequence of returns risk?
The order the good and bad years arrive in. While you're saving, order barely matters. Only the average does. Once you're withdrawing it matters enormously: a poor first few years means selling more units at low prices to fund the same $60,000 of spending and the account never recovers even if the average return works out fine. Two retirements with identical average returns can end decades apart because of it.
Should I include Social Security in this?
Yes, in the other income box, at what it's worth today. Social Security shifts the answer more than almost any other input, because every dollar it pays is a dollar the account doesn't have to. Use your own figure from ssa.gov. The default there is a placeholder and not a prediction about you.