Retirement Calculator: Will Your Savings Last?

Most retirement calculators ask how much you want to spend, then hand back a target so large it reads as a rejection notice. That framing is backwards. The useful question is how many years of spending your current balance actually buys, and whether that count clears your own life expectancy.

Framed that way, the arithmetic gets simple. A balance funds a number of years, and a life table implies a number of years. If the first is bigger than the second, the plan holds. If it is smaller, a retirement calculator is only useful for showing you which lever closes the gap.

This page runs that comparison on current federal figures: 2026 Social Security amounts, 2026 IRS limits, and the SSA life table. It then shows what your state leaves after tax. Companies cannot pay for placement anywhere on DollarVisor, and nothing you enter here is sold to an advisor.

If the reason to plan at all still feels abstract, this short explainer covers why the timing of the decision matters more than the size of it.

1. What a Retirement Calculator Actually Tells You

Quick Answer: A retirement calculator converts a balance into a number of years. You supply the balance, an expected return, a first-year withdrawal, and an inflation rate. It subtracts each year’s spending, grows what is left, raises next year’s spending, and reports the year the balance hits zero.

Every retirement calculator runs one loop: withdraw, grow, raise the withdrawal, repeat. People fixate on the dollar target, but the number that decides the outcome is the year count that loop produces.

Four fields drive it:

• Current balance. Everything earmarked for retirement across a 401(k), an IRA or Roth IRA, and any brokerage account.
• Expected return. The blended return across the whole portfolio, not the return on the best fund inside it.
• First-year withdrawal. Usually entered as a percentage. This is the single most powerful field on the page.
• Inflation. The rate your withdrawal rises each year. Social Security’s 2026 cost-of-living adjustment was 2.8%, per the SSA, which is a defensible default.

Two inputs most tools skip do more damage than any of those four: guaranteed income already coming in, and how long you personally need the money to last. Sections 3 and 8 put both back in.

2. How Long Does $500,000 Actually Last?

Quick Answer: On $500,000 earning 5% with withdrawals rising 2.8% a year, a 4% first-year withdrawal lasts 35.0 years and a 7% withdrawal lasts 16.8 years. One percentage point on the withdrawal rate is worth roughly five to nine years of funded retirement.

Withdrawal rate is the only retirement calculator input where a small change produces a violent change in the answer. Adding a point to your assumed return moves the end date by a couple of years. Adding a point to the withdrawal rate can move it by nine.

The two red rows matter most. A 6% withdrawal empties the account at 85 and a 7% withdrawal at 82, both inside the range a 65-year-old should plan for. Everything at 4% or below outlives any reasonable planning horizon.

Moving from a 7% withdrawal to a 4% one costs $15,000 of first-year income and buys 18 extra years of funding.

3. How Much of the Bill Does Social Security Cover?

Quick Answer: The average retired worker received $2,074.53 a month in January 2026, or $24,894 a year. Against a $70,000 budget that covers 36% and leaves the portfolio to fund $45,106. Claiming later moves that share a long way: the 2026 maximum at 70 covers 89% of the same budget.

A retirement calculator that only asks about your portfolio answers the wrong question, because the portfolio never covers the whole budget. It covers the gap between guaranteed income and spending, and shrinking that gap is usually easier than growing the balance.

The maximum figures apply only to people who paid the maximum payroll tax across a full career, so most households land nearer the average row. The shape holds at every income level: each year you delay claiming raises the benefit and cuts the balance the portfolio has to carry.

The last column is the one worth staring at. Claiming at 70 instead of 62 drops the required portfolio by $663,600 on the same budget. No investment decision available to an ordinary saver moves the target that far.

4. How to Run Your Own Retirement Projection

Quick Answer: Feed a retirement calculator in this order. Total the balance, subtract guaranteed income from your spending, then convert the remaining gap into a withdrawal rate. Check that rate against the year count in Section 2. Five passes take ten minutes and produce a number you can defend.

1. Total every retirement dollar in one figure. Add the 401(k), the IRA, the old plan from two jobs ago, and any brokerage money genuinely earmarked for retirement. Leave out the emergency fund and the house.
2. Write down your real annual spending. Use last year’s bank statements, not a budget you intend to follow. Add health premiums and subtract the mortgage if it will be paid off.
3. Subtract guaranteed income. Take your Social Security estimate from your own SSA statement, plus any pension or annuity. What is left is the only amount the portfolio has to produce.
4. Convert the gap into a withdrawal rate. Divide the gap by your balance. A $30,000 gap on $600,000 is 5%. Now look that rate up in the table in Section 2 and read the year count.
5. Rerun it with a worse market. Drop your return two points. A plan that still clears your life expectancy is a plan; one that only works at 7% returns is a forecast.

Step four is where most projections quietly fail. People type a withdrawal rate that sounds prudent instead of deriving it from a gap they actually have, so the retirement calculator answers a question about somebody else’s household.

5. What Your Starting Age Is Worth

Quick Answer: Saving $12,000 a year at 6% from age 30 reaches $1,337,217 by 65. Starting the same contribution at 45 reaches $441,427. Fifteen years of delay costs $895,790 while saving only $180,000 in deposits.

Every retirement calculator has a contribution field, and the IRS raised the elective deferral limit to $24,500 for 2026, with an $8,000 catch-up at 50 and $11,250 at ages 60 to 63. The catch-up provisions exist because late starters need them, and the table below shows how much ground they are being asked to make up.

Read the middle two columns together. The saver who starts at 30 deposits $420,000 and ends with $1,337,217, so growth supplies 69% of the balance. The saver who starts at 55 deposits $120,000 and ends with $158,170, where growth supplies 24%. Same rate, different engine.

That is the honest case for the catch-up limits. Maxing out from 55 produces $322,929, more than double the modest contribution and still short of what a moderate saver reaches by starting 25 years earlier. Late saving works by brute force. Our breakdown of retirement targets by age and income shows where each starting point typically lands.

6. Where You Retire Changes the Paycheck

Quick Answer: Almost no retirement calculator asks where you live, yet six of the ten largest states leave a $60,000 IRA withdrawal at 65 untaxed at the state level. None of the ten tax Social Security benefits. Same balance, same withdrawal, different spendable income.

Federal tax applies everywhere, so the state layer is the part a retirement calculator rarely models and you can actually control. The table covers the ten most populous states and the rules applied to an ordinary 401(k) or IRA withdrawal at 65.

Two patterns fall out. The states people assume are expensive in retirement often are not: Illinois and Pennsylvania take nothing from an ordinary withdrawal, and Michigan and Georgia take nothing at this size. And thresholds are the whole story in New York, Georgia, and Michigan, where a $60,000 withdrawal clears Georgia’s exclusion but an $80,000 one does not.

None of the ten taxes Social Security benefits, which reinforces Section 3. Guaranteed income is usually larger than people expect, and in most of the country it is also the least-taxed dollar in the plan.

7. Six Inputs That Quietly Break a Projection

Quick Answer: Most retirement calculator projections fail on the same six inputs. An optimistic return, spending copied from a budget instead of a bank statement, health costs left out, order-of-returns risk, required minimum distributions, and a claiming age entered as a wish rather than a decision.

• The heroic return. An 8% assumption on a portfolio that holds bonds is not conservative arithmetic, it is a different portfolio. Enter the blend you actually own.
• Budget spending, not real spending. Households routinely underestimate annual outgoings by a five-figure sum. Use twelve months of statements.
• Health and premium costs left out. Medicare premiums, supplemental coverage, dental and vision all land in the same years. Our rundown of which policies a household actually needs is a reasonable place to size that line.
• Sequence of returns. Two portfolios with identical average returns end very differently if one takes its bad years first, because early withdrawals come out of a smaller base.
• Required minimum distributions. Traditional accounts force withdrawals later in life whether or not you want the income, which can push you past a state exclusion threshold.
• A claiming age you have not committed to. Entering 70 and claiming at 64 invalidates the whole projection, since the benefit is permanently lower.

Sequence risk is the one most people have never heard of and the one that does the most damage. A 20% loss in year two of retirement, while you are withdrawing, is not the same event as a 20% loss in year twenty.

Premiums are the least flexible line in a retired household’s budget, and they keep moving. Sizing that item with our car insurance cost estimator by state and age beats guessing at it.

8. Longevity: The Input Nobody Enters

Quick Answer: On the SSA period life table, a 65-year-old man has 18.12 years of remaining life expectancy and a 65-year-old woman 20.66: average ages of about 83 and 86. Half of each group lives longer, which is why a plan built to the average fails half the time.

Life expectancy is the yardstick every year count here is measured against, and it is the one input almost no retirement calculator asks for. Compare it to Section 2: a 7% withdrawal empties the account at 82, short of the average even before you count the half of retirees who beat it.

The figures come from the SSA actuarial life table, based on 2023 mortality and used in the 2026 Trustees Report. Two things follow.

First, plan past the average, not to it. Adding roughly five years to the life-table figure puts a 65-year-old at 88 to 91, which matches the 4% column almost exactly. Second, a couple needs the longer of two horizons, not the average: the money has to support whoever survives.

9. The Bottom Line

Quick Answer: Rank the retirement calculator inputs by how far each moves the answer: withdrawal rate first, claiming age second, starting age third, state tax fourth, expected return last. Fix them in that order and the projection improves more than any amount of fund shopping.

The four datasets point the same way. Withdrawal rate swung the funded horizon from 16.8 years to 56.6. Delaying a claim to 70 cut the portfolio requirement by $663,600. Fifteen years of earlier saving was worth $895,790. Six of the ten largest states took nothing from a $60,000 withdrawal. Expected return, the input people argue about most, was nowhere near the top.

Run a retirement calculator once with honest inputs, then check the year count against age 90. If it clears, the job is maintenance. If it does not, you know which of five levers to pull, and our guide to the main asset classes covers where the balance should sit while you do.

10. Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does a retirement calculator work?

It runs a yearly loop. It subtracts your withdrawal from the balance, grows what remains at your expected return, raises next year’s withdrawal by your inflation rate, then repeats until the balance reaches zero. The output that matters is the year that happens. Enter your balance, return, first-year withdrawal, and inflation rate, and compare the result to age 90 rather than to a life-table average.

2. Will $500,000 last through retirement?

It depends almost entirely on the withdrawal rate you enter in a retirement calculator. At 5% annual returns with withdrawals rising 2.8% a year, $500,000 funds 35.0 years at a 4% first-year withdrawal but only 16.8 years at 7%. At 4% that means money until about 100; at 7% it runs out around 82. Add Social Security and the same balance stretches further, because the portfolio only covers the gap.

3. How much does Social Security cover?

The average retired worker received $2,074.53 a month in January 2026, which is $24,894 a year, or 36% of a $70,000 budget. The 2026 maximum benefit is $2,969 a month claiming at 62, $4,152 at full retirement age, and $5,181 at 70. Claiming at 70 instead of 62 cuts the portfolio needed to fund a $70,000 budget by $663,600.

4. What withdrawal rate should I use in a retirement calculator?

Derive it rather than pick it. Subtract guaranteed income from your real annual spending, then divide that gap by your balance. A $30,000 gap on a $600,000 balance is 5%, which funds 25.6 years on our assumptions. If the rate you derive lands above 5%, the fix is usually a later claiming date or lower fixed costs, not a higher assumed return.

5. Which states do not tax retirement income?

Few retirement calculator tools ask, but it matters. Texas and Florida have no individual income tax at all. Illinois and Pennsylvania exempt ordinary 401(k) and IRA withdrawals outright, and Michigan and Georgia exempt them up to generous 2026 thresholds. New York, Ohio, North Carolina, and California tax withdrawals above their respective exclusions or credits. None of the ten taxes Social Security benefits.

6. Does starting at 45 instead of 30 really matter that much?

Yes. Saving $12,000 a year at 6% from age 30 reaches $1,337,217 by 65, while the same contribution from 45 reaches $441,427. The fifteen-year delay costs $895,790 in ending balance and saves only $180,000 in deposits. Maxing out the 2026 limit of $24,500 from 45 recovers part of the gap, reaching $901,247, which is why the catch-up rules exist.

This page is for general information and is not financial advice. Benefit amounts, tax rules, and market returns change; verify current figures with the SSA, your plan administrator, and a tax professional before making a decision. See our disclaimer.