Retirement Savings Calculator
Enter your current retirement savings, how much you contribute each month, an expected annual return, and how many years until retirement to see your projected balance and how much of it came from growth rather than contributions.
Results
| Projected balance at retirement | — |
|---|---|
| Total contributed | — |
| Total investment growth | — |
Year-by-year projection
| Year | Contributions to date | Projected balance |
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How this calculator works
This calculator projects your retirement balance by combining your current savings with regular monthly contributions, then compounding the whole amount monthly at your expected annual return. Each month's growth is calculated on the balance as it stands, which is why the projected growth line accelerates in later years even though your contribution stays flat: a larger balance earns a larger dollar amount of return, and that return then earns its own return the following month.
This is also why starting early matters more than almost any other retirement decision. Consider two savers who both contribute $500 a month at a 7% return, but one starts 10 years earlier than the other. The early starter doesn't just have 10 extra years of $500 deposits sitting in the account — those early dollars spend decades compounding before retirement, while the late starter's contributions never get that runway. Over a long enough horizon, the early starter can end up with a meaningfully larger balance despite contributing the same amount each month, simply because time did more of the work. This is the classic "time in the market" argument for starting to save as early as possible, even in small amounts.
Results update automatically as you change any input above. This tool is a simplified projection: it doesn't account for inflation eroding purchasing power, taxes on withdrawals or contributions, employer matching, Social Security, or the fact that real investment returns vary year to year rather than compounding smoothly. Use it to build intuition about savings and time horizon, not as a guarantee of your actual retirement income.