🏖️ Retirement Readiness Calculator
The whole retirement question is one comparison: the pot your current path builds versus the pot your retirement actually needs. This runs both, tells you plainly whether you are on track, and gives you the specific monthly change that closes the gap, because a gap with a number attached is a plan.
6 to 8 percent is the long-term range for stock-heavy portfolios; use less if you invest conservatively.
Most people need 70 to 80 percent of their working income. Use today's dollars.
Pot your current path builds
$812,648
Pot you need (4% rule)
$1,500,000
Save this much MORE per month to get on track
$563
How much of the target you are on track for
54.2%
Your current path builds about $812,648 by age 65, but $60,000 a year of retirement spending needs about $1,500,000 (the 4 percent rule). You are 54 percent of the way there. The fix, in one number: save $563 more per month starting now. Every year you wait, that number grows.
Estimates for planning, not financial advice. Your real numbers will vary; that is exactly why you track them.
Does this resonate?
A business income stream changes this math
If the catch-up number looks impossible from a paycheck, you are not stuck. Income you own keeps paying in retirement, and it does not care how old you are when you start it.
See income you could own →Good questions about this math
What is the 4% rule?
A widely used planning benchmark: if you withdraw 4 percent of your pot in year one of retirement and adjust for inflation after that, the money has historically lasted 30+ years. Flip it around and your target pot is 25 times your planned annual spending. It is a planning guide, not a guarantee; conservative planners use 3.5 percent (about 28x spending).
Does this account for Social Security?
Not directly, and that makes the result conservative. If you expect, say, $20,000 a year from Social Security, subtract it from your planned annual spending before entering it, and your needed pot drops by $500,000. Planning without it builds in a safety margin.
Is it too late for me?
The math never says never; it says the required monthly number grows. If the catch-up number looks impossible from salary alone, the honest options are retiring later, spending less, or adding an income stream that outpaces what saving alone can do.
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