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Project your retirement nest egg from current savings, monthly contributions, expected return, and inflation over a 20–40 year horizon.
What this tool helps you answer
Use this page when you want to know whether your current savings rate is enough, how much more a higher monthly contribution could add, or how inflation changes the story behind a headline future-value number.
Read the ending balance together with the contribution and inflation metrics. The useful question is not only how large the ending number is, but how much came from deposits, how much came from compounding, and what that balance may still buy in real terms.
FV = P(1+r/n)^(nt) + PMT((1+r/n)^(nt)-1)/(r/n)Next step
Project your retirement nest egg from current savings, monthly contributions, expected return, and inflation over a 20–40 year horizon.
Editorial review
This page combines the live tool, input guidance, worked examples, and operating limits so Retirement Calculator stays useful even before users interact with the calculator.
Reviewed by Klartext Tools against the current Retirement Calculator workflow on 2026-02-24.
Last updated:
Use with judgment
Page scope
A saver starts with an existing balance and adds steady monthly contributions for the next 18 years.
Useful for seeing how a solid starting balance and regular investing compound over time.
After loading the example, lower the rate to 5% or raise inflation to see how quickly real growth changes.
A shorter runway with much higher monthly saving and a small annual step-up in contributions.
Good for showing how aggressive monthly saving can partially offset a shorter investment horizon.
Compare this with a lower monthly contribution to decide whether saving rate or return assumption matters more in your plan.
Use this page to model retirement savings growth from a current balance and consistent monthly contributions, with optional inflation adjustment.
Use the combined value of all retirement-earmarked accounts. If you are just starting, enter zero or a small seed amount.
Use a long-run assumption that matches your allocation. 7% is a common nominal assumption for equity-heavy portfolios; reduce it for more conservative mixes.
Include all retirement contributions — 401k employee and employer match, IRA, and any additional savings earmarked for retirement.
Set the inflation rate to 2–3% to see your projected balance in today's purchasing power. This is the most useful column for planning a sustainable withdrawal.
Load one steady investing scenario and one catch-up plan, then change only one assumption at a time to see whether rate, contribution size, or inflation is doing most of the work.
A saver starts with an existing balance and adds steady monthly contributions for the next 18 years.
Sample inputs
Sample outcome: Useful for seeing how a solid starting balance and regular investing compound over time.
After loading the example, lower the rate to 5% or raise inflation to see how quickly real growth changes.
A shorter runway with much higher monthly saving and a small annual step-up in contributions.
Sample inputs
Sample outcome: Good for showing how aggressive monthly saving can partially offset a shorter investment horizon.
Compare this with a lower monthly contribution to decide whether saving rate or return assumption matters more in your plan.
Compound growth looks powerful on paper, but planning decisions usually fail when rate assumptions are too optimistic or inflation is not accounted for. The difference between a 6% and 8% annual return over 30 years is not 2 percentage points. It is a dramatically different ending balance because the gap compounds every year. This calculator helps you compare what you contributed, what compounding added on top, and what the ending balance may be worth in real purchasing power terms so you are not planning against a nominal number that inflation quietly erodes.
Many FIRE plans fail before they start because the number is chosen for emotional comfort rather than built from expenses, time horizon, return assumptions, and the drag of real-world costs. A credible FIRE target should be a planning model, not a slogan.
Rent-versus-buy decisions go wrong when buyers anchor on a single metric such as monthly payment or future home appreciation. A better comparison treats housing as a bundle of tradeoffs: time horizon, flexibility, cash commitment, maintenance risk, and what the down payment could do elsewhere.
Investors often use a growth calculator and then feel surprised when the real account value lands lower than the projection. That gap usually comes from mixing two separate questions: how money compounds when assumptions go well, and how ongoing fees quietly reduce the outcome year after year.
These tools look similar because both deal with housing costs, but they answer different decisions. Mortgage Affordability Planner asks how much home payment you can realistically carry. Rent vs Buy Calculator asks whether buying beats renting under your time horizon, cash position, and cost assumptions.
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