Retirement Savings Calculator

How to use the retirement savings calculator

1. Enter your Current age, your Retirement age and Plan until age (the age your money should last to, for example 95).
2. Enter your Current savings, your Monthly contribution and the Yearly increase of contributions (%), for example 2% if you raise your savings with your salary.
3. Set the Annual return before retirement (%), the Annual return during retirement (%) (often lower, with a more cautious portfolio) and Inflation (%).
4. In Withdrawals, choose Find the sustainable yearly withdrawal or Test a yearly withdrawal, and enter the Yearly withdrawal (today’s money) in the second case.
5. Choose how the chart shows values in Chart values: Nominal (future dollars) or Real (today’s money).

The results show your Savings at retirement, the Same, in today’s money, the Total contributions, the Yearly withdrawal and how long the Savings last. The chart shows the balance at the end of each year, in blue during the saving phase and in orange during retirement. The Year-by-year projection table lists contributions, investment growth, withdrawals and the balance in both nominal and real terms; Download CSV exports it.

How the projection works

The calculator simulates every month:

• The annual return is converted into an equivalent monthly rate: i = (1 + r)^(1/12) − 1, so a 5% return gives exactly 5% over a full year.
• Contributions are added at the end of each month. They increase once a year by the percentage you chose.
• Withdrawals are entered in today’s money and indexed to inflation every year, so they keep the same purchasing power. They are taken at the start of each month of retirement.
• A future amount is converted into today’s money by dividing it by (1 + inflation)^years.

For Find the sustainable yearly withdrawal, the tool finds the inflation-indexed withdrawal that brings the balance to exactly zero at the Plan until age. For Test a yearly withdrawal, it shows the age at which the savings run out, or “Beyond age 120”.

Example with the default values

At 35, with $25,000 saved, $500 a month increasing 2% a year, a 5% return before retirement, 3.5% after and 2% inflation, you would have about $621,570 at 65, or about $343,150 in today’s money. You would have contributed about $243,410. That capital can fund about $14,245 a year in today’s money until 95, which means about $25,800 in the first year of retirement once inflation is included. A withdrawal of $40,000 a year in today’s money would empty the savings at about 74.

Nominal vs real: why it matters

Nominal amounts are the dollars shown on your future statements. Real amounts remove inflation and tell you what those dollars would buy today. After 30 years at 2% inflation, a dollar buys only about 55% of what it buys now, so a large nominal balance can be misleading. Plan your spending with real values.

Limits of this estimate

This is an educational estimate, not financial advice. Returns and inflation are constant here, while real markets vary from year to year, and the order of good and bad years matters a lot once withdrawals start. Taxes are not modelled: withdrawals from an RRSP or RRIF are taxable income, TFSA withdrawals are not, and RRIF minimum withdrawals apply from age 72. Government pensions (CPP/QPP, OAS), employer pensions and investment fees are also left out; subtract fees from the return you enter.