Retirement Savings Calculator
Project how much your savings could grow by the time you retire.
How to use the Retirement Savings Calculator
- Enter your age and target retirement age.
- Add your current savings and monthly contribution.
- Enter an expected return and read the projection.
Future value = current savings compounded + future value of the monthly contributions
About the Retirement Savings Calculator
This projection grows your money in two ways and adds them together. Your current savings are compounded monthly at the return you assume, and your monthly contributions are treated as a stream that is each invested and left to grow — the standard future-value-of-an-annuity calculation. The result is your projected balance at retirement, which the tool splits into the portion you paid in versus the portion that is pure investment growth.
That split is the point. Over a few decades the growth slice usually dwarfs the contributions, which is the case for starting early and letting time compound. Nudge the monthly contribution or the age you begin and the change shows immediately in the growth figure.
The honest caveats are large. Real markets do not deliver a steady return — they rise and fall, and the order of good and bad years matters — so no single rate can promise this outcome. The figure is also before inflation, tax and fees, so its real spending power is lower than it looks; run the inflation calculator to see by how much. Use it to compare scenarios, not as a guarantee, and pair it with the savings goal calculator to work back from a target. It is not financial advice.
Frequently asked questions
Is the projected figure a guarantee?
No. It assumes one steady average return every year, which real markets never give — they rise and fall, and a run of bad years early on hits the outcome hard. Treat the number as a scenario to compare against others, not a promise of what you will have.
Is the result before or after inflation and tax?
Before both, and before fees. It is a gross nominal projection, so its real spending power decades from now is lower than the figure suggests. How much lower depends on inflation over the period and on how the money is taxed where you live.
What return should I enter?
We deliberately do not assume one, because it varies with what you invest in and over what period. A sensible habit is to run a few figures — a cautious one and an optimistic one — and see how wide the range of outcomes is rather than trusting a single guess.
Does it assume my contributions rise over time?
No. It holds the monthly contribution fixed for the whole period. In reality people often increase what they save as their income grows, so if you expect to do that, re-run the projection with a higher figure to see the effect.
How does it split contributions from growth?
It adds up everything you pay in — your starting savings plus each monthly contribution — and calls that your contributions. Whatever the projected balance is above that total is labelled investment growth, so you can see how much of the result is your money versus compounding.