Retirement Withdrawal Calculator
Calculate how long your retirement savings last at different withdrawal rates.
What this calculator does
This calculator answers a single question: how long a retirement portfolio lasts when you withdraw a fixed percentage of the starting balance each year and raise it with inflation. Enter your balance, withdrawal rate, expected return, inflation rate, and current age, and it reports the age at which the portfolio is exhausted plus the initial monthly income.
The year-by-year table is where the mechanics show. Early on, growth exceeds withdrawals and the balance often keeps rising. Then withdrawals, compounding upward with inflation, cross above returns and the balance turns over. Where that crossover falls determines nearly everything about how long the money survives.
When to use it
Use it at the point of retiring, when you have a real balance and need to convert it into a spending number you can live with. It is also the tool for stress-testing a rate you have already chosen: raising withdrawals by half a point to fund something you want is easy to justify until you see the years it costs.
It is equally useful before retirement, for someone deciding whether to go at 60 or 65. A five-year earlier start means a smaller balance funding a longer drawdown, and this calculator quantifies both halves of that trade at once.
Understanding the inputs
Starting balance should be the portion of your savings actually earmarked for spending, excluding a house or anything you intend to leave behind. Withdrawal rate applies to that starting balance, not to the balance each year, so a 4 percent rate on $1 million means $40,000 in year one and then that figure indexed to inflation.
Expected return should reflect a retirement-stage allocation, so nearer 5 percent than 7 for a portfolio with meaningful bond exposure, and net of fees. Inflation at 3 percent is the long-run US average, though the gap between return and inflation is what really drives the result. Current age simply sets the ages shown in the table.
How is this calculated?
Each year: Balance = Previous × (1 + Return) − Withdrawal × (1 + Inflation)^year.
A worked example
Take $1,200,000 at age 65, with a 5 percent return and 3 percent inflation. At a 4 percent withdrawal rate the first year's income is $48,000, and the portfolio lasts about 37 years, running dry around age 102. That is comfortable margin for a retirement starting at 65.
Raise the rate to 5 percent, or $60,000 a year, and the portfolio lasts roughly 27 years, ending near age 92. An extra $12,000 a year costs ten years of longevity. Move the other way to 3.5 percent, or $42,000, and it stretches past 45 years, comfortably beyond any realistic horizon.
Limitations and assumptions
This is a projection under fixed assumptions, not a prediction. It applies the same return every year, which no portfolio experiences, and that single simplification hides the most important risk in drawdown. Sequence-of-returns risk means a bad first five years can exhaust a portfolio a decade earlier than an identical average return arriving in a friendlier order.
It also excludes taxes, Social Security, pensions, required minimum distributions, healthcare shocks, long-term care costs, and any flexibility in your spending. Real retirees adjust, and that adjustment is worth years. Read the longevity figure as one point in a wide distribution and revisit it annually against your actual balance.
Common Questions
- How long will $1 million last in retirement?
- It depends almost entirely on the withdrawal rate. At 4 percent, or $40,000 rising with inflation, a balanced portfolio typically supports roughly 35 years. At 6 percent, or $60,000, that falls to a little over 20. The difference between those two rates is larger than most retirees expect.
- Is the 4 percent rule still reliable?
- It was derived from US market history for a 30-year retirement with a stock and bond mix, and it holds up reasonably for that specific case. It was never intended for a 45-year retirement, nor for a portfolio charging 1 percent in fees. Treat 4 percent as a starting point to test, not a guarantee.
- What is sequence-of-returns risk?
- It is the danger of poor returns arriving early in retirement. Withdrawing a fixed real amount from a falling portfolio sells more shares at low prices, permanently shrinking the base that later growth compounds on. Two retirees with identical average returns can end up decades apart in longevity purely because of ordering.
- Should my withdrawals rise with inflation?
- This calculator assumes they do, which is the conservative choice: it holds your real spending power constant. Actual retiree spending often follows a smile, high in early active years, lower in the middle, then rising again for healthcare late on. Fixed real withdrawals overstate the middle and understate the end.
- What return should I assume during drawdown?
- Lower than during accumulation, because most portfolios shift toward bonds at retirement. Five percent nominal for a 60/40 mix is a common planning figure, versus 7 for an all-equity accumulation portfolio. Using your accumulation return during drawdown is one of the most common ways these projections flatter themselves.
- Does this include Social Security?
- No, it models portfolio withdrawals alone. In practice Social Security covers a large share of spending for most households, which lets the portfolio support a lower withdrawal rate. Subtract your expected benefit from your spending need first, then set the withdrawal rate against what the portfolio genuinely has to cover.
- What about taxes and required minimum distributions?
- Withdrawals from Traditional 401(k)s and IRAs are taxed as ordinary income, so a $50,000 gross withdrawal is not $50,000 to spend. RMDs also begin at 73 and may force you to withdraw more than you want. Roth balances avoid both, which is why account order matters in drawdown.
- In what order should I draw down accounts?
- The conventional sequence is taxable first, then tax-deferred, then Roth last, which preserves tax-free growth longest. That is a default rather than a rule: filling low tax brackets with Traditional withdrawals in early retirement, before Social Security and RMDs start, often beats it and reduces later forced distributions.
- Would a flexible strategy do better than a fixed rate?
- Generally yes. Guardrail approaches cut spending modestly after bad years and raise it after good ones, which lets you start at a higher rate with similar failure odds. This calculator models a fixed inflation-adjusted withdrawal, the least flexible approach, so treat its longevity figure as a conservative floor.