How the math works
How to use it
- Enter what you have across every retirement account — 401(k), 403(b), IRA, the lot. Leave out the house; you cannot eat it.
- Enter what you want the savings to hand you in the first year, not your whole budget. Social Security and any pension go in the guaranteed-income box, where they belong — they are inflation-adjusted income you cannot outlive, and they carry a share your portfolio then does not have to.
- Read the starting withdrawal rate before anything else. It is the single number the entire retirement-income literature argues about, and it tells you more about your plan than the balance does.
- Then read the stress line. It reruns the identical plan with one 2008-sized year at the start. The gap between those two ages is sequence-of-returns risk, and it is the risk that actually ends retirements.
- Move the plan-to age out to 95 or beyond before you decide anything. Half of 65-year-olds outlive their own life expectancy — that is what an average is — and a plan built to the average is a coin flip.
A worked example
$500,000 saved at 65, taking $20,000 a year from it and raising that with inflation, on a 5.5% return and 2.5% inflation. That is a starting rate of 4.0%, and with $24,000 of Social Security on top it is $44,000 of first-year income. The balance holds past 95. Now run the stress: put a -30% year at the front and change nothing else, and the money is gone years earlier — same average return, same withdrawals, worse order. That is the whole argument for holding one to two years of spending in cash at the start of retirement, so that a bad first year is something you wait out rather than something you sell into.
Where this sits in the Financial Literacy resource
A calculator tells you where you are. It does not tell you what to do next, and a number without a plan behind it tends to produce anxiety rather than progress. These stages are free, need no account, and cover the decision this calculator is measuring.
Common questions
How much can I withdraw from my retirement savings each year?
The common benchmark is about 4% of the balance in the first year, raised each year for inflation after that. It comes from William Bengen’s 1994 study in the Journal of Financial Planning, which tested rolling 30-year retirements against US market history from 1926 to 1992 and looked for the highest rate that survived even the worst starting year. So 4% is not a typical outcome — it is a worst-case survivor, and Bengen himself has since revised it upward, to 4.7% in 2025 using a more diversified portfolio. Treat it as a starting point you then adjust, not a speed limit.
What is sequence-of-returns risk?
It is the risk that the order of your returns, not their average, decides whether the money lasts. While you are saving, order barely matters — a bad year early is a discount on everything you buy afterwards. Once you are withdrawing, a bad year early means you sell more shares to raise the same income, and those shares are not there to recover. Two retirements with an identical average return can end decades apart purely on which years came first.
At what age do required minimum distributions start?
Age 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, and age 75 if you were born in 1960 or later, under the SECURE 2.0 Act. Your first one can be delayed to April 1 of the following year, though taking it that way puts two distributions into one tax year. Every one after that is due by 31 December. Roth IRAs have no RMDs during the original owner’s lifetime, and since 2024 designated Roth accounts inside a 401(k) or 403(b) do not either.
What happens if I miss a required minimum distribution?
There is a 25% excise tax on whatever you failed to take, cut to 10% if you correct it within the two-year correction window the IRS allows. It used to be 50%, which SECURE 2.0 reduced. The distribution itself is still owed on top of the penalty, so the cheapest version of this mistake is the one you fix quickly.
Which accounts should I withdraw from first?
The conventional order is taxable first, then tax-deferred, then Roth last, on the logic that money you are not taxed on again should compound longest. The refinement that matters more is filling low brackets deliberately: the years between retiring and the start of Social Security and RMDs are often the lowest-income years of an adult life, and leaving them empty means those same dollars come out later at a higher rate as a forced distribution. There is no single right order — it depends on the balance across your account types and what your income looks like each year.
Does this calculator include taxes?
No, and that is deliberate rather than a shortcut. Tax on a withdrawal depends on your state, your filing status, how much of your Social Security becomes taxable, and whether the total pushes you over an IRMAA threshold two years later — four things this calculator does not know. Every figure here is pre-tax. Withdrawals from a traditional 401(k) or IRA are taxed as ordinary income, so the amount that reaches your bank is smaller than the amount shown.
What this calculator is not
It is an educational model, not a projection and certainly not advice. It knows nothing about your income, your state, your debts or your benefits status, and it ignores taxes and fees unless the page says otherwise. If you receive SSI or SSDI some of this math works differently and getting it wrong can cost you eligibility — start with the Disability Wealth Guide instead. Our sourcing and correction policy is on the editorial standards page.
Nothing here is stored. Every calculation runs in your browser. No numbers are transmitted, logged or saved to any server, and no account is required. Close the tab and it is gone.