Retirement Calculator

How your retirement savings grow over time

Building a retirement nest egg is a story of three ingredients working together: the balance you already have, the contributions you keep adding, and the investment growth that compounds on top of both. Each month, your existing balance earns a little more, your new deposit (plus any employer match) joins the pile, and the cycle repeats — for decades. Individually, those pieces look small. Stacked month after month and compounded at a steady rate, they can add up to a number much larger than the sum of what you and your employer ever put in.

Current balance, contributions, and the employer match

This calculator projects two growth streams and adds them together. Your current balance compounds on its own at your expected monthly rate for every month between now and retirement:

FV_balance = current × (1 + i)ⁿ

Meanwhile, your monthly contributions — combined with your employer match — are treated as a recurring deposit made at the start of each month (an "annuity due"), which compounds for the remaining months until retirement:

D = contribution × (1 + match ÷ 100)
FV_deposits = D × [((1 + i)ⁿ − 1) ÷ i] × (1 + i)

Here i is your expected annual return divided by 100 and by 12 (the monthly rate), n is the number of months between now and your retirement age, and D is your effective monthly deposit including the match. The two future values are added together for your projected nest egg: FV = FV_balance + FV_deposits. If your expected return is exactly zero, the deposit side simplifies to a straight line — D × n — since there is no compounding to apply.

Worked example — 30 years to retirement at 7%

Suppose you're 30 years old, plan to retire at 65 (35 years — 420 months — away), have $25,000 saved, contribute $500 a month, receive a 50% employer match, and expect a 7% average annual return. Your effective monthly deposit becomes $500 × 1.50 = $750 (your $500 plus a $250 match), and your monthly rate is roughly 0.5833% (7% ÷ 12).

Compounding your current $25,000 for 420 months grows it to about $287,654. Compounding the $750 monthly deposits as an annuity due over the same 420 months adds roughly $1,358,671. Add those two pieces together and the projected nest egg comes to approximately $1,646,324. Of that total, you personally contributed $210,000 (35 years × 12 × $500), your employer contributed about $105,000 in matching funds, and the remaining $1,306,324 came from investment growth — the compounding effect doing the heavy lifting over a long horizon.

How much do you actually need to retire? (the 25x / 4% rule)

A widely cited rule of thumb says you should aim to accumulate roughly 25 times your expected annual spending in retirement. The logic: if you withdraw about 4% of that balance in your first year and adjust for inflation afterward, a diversified portfolio has historically had a reasonable chance of lasting through a long retirement. So if you expect to spend $60,000 a year, the rule points to a target of roughly $1.5 million. It's a starting point for a conversation, not a guarantee — your real number depends on other income (like Social Security or a pension), how long you expect to live, where you'll live, and how markets behave during your retirement years. Use your projected nest egg here to see whether your current plan is tracking toward a number in that neighborhood, and adjust your contributions, match capture, or retirement age if it isn't.

Why returns, taxes, and inflation matter

The number this calculator produces is in nominal, pre-tax dollars — exactly what your account statement might show on the day you retire, if your assumed rate held steady the whole time. Three real-world forces will shrink that headline figure before it becomes spendable income. First, taxes : many retirement accounts (like a traditional 401k) tax withdrawals as ordinary income, while others (like a Roth) tax contributions instead. Second, inflation: a dollar 30 years from now buys less than a dollar today, so your real purchasing power at retirement will be lower than the nominal balance suggests. Third, market variability: actual returns bounce around year to year — sometimes sharply — rather than gliding along a smooth, constant line. Treat this projection as a planning illustration, and consider running it again with a more conservative rate to see how your plan holds up if markets disappoint.

How to read your results

• Projected nest egg at retirement — your estimated total balance at your chosen retirement age, combining your current savings, every future contribution (yours and your employer's), and all projected investment growth.
• Your total contributions — the sum of every monthly deposit you personally make between now and retirement, excluding the employer match and any growth. This is "money from your paycheck," not "money the market created."
• Employer match total — the cumulative value of the matching contributions your employer adds on top of your own deposits, based on the match percentage you entered.
• Investment growth — the projected nest egg minus your current balance and every dollar contributed (by you and your employer). This is the portion compounding is projected to generate for you — often the largest slice over a long horizon.
• Years until retirement — the number of years between your current age and your chosen retirement age, which sets how long your money has to compound.
• By-decade schedule — toggle it open to see how your contributions, employer match, investment growth, and running balance build at each step along the way to retirement.