Enter your age, salary, contribution rate, and employer match terms to see how your balance could grow year by year.
Your employer contributes a percentage of what you put in, up to a limit expressed as a percentage of your salary. For example, a 50% match up to 6% of salary means the employer adds 50 cents for every dollar you contribute, capped at contributions of 6% of your pay — contributing more than 6% yourself doesn't earn any extra match on the excess. This calculator applies that logic every year of the projection, using the match rate and match limit fields above.
Long-run US stock market averages have historically landed in the 7-10% range before inflation for a diversified equity portfolio, though any single year can swing well above or below that, and past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Many long-term 401(k) projections use something in the 6-8% range as a conservative-to-moderate planning assumption — try running the numbers at a couple of different rates to see how sensitive your projected balance is to that assumption.
Under the hood, this calculator simulates one year at a time from your current age to your retirement age: each year, your contribution and the matched employer contribution are added to the balance, the whole balance is grown by the expected investment return, and then your salary is increased by the expected salary growth rate for the next year. Contributions and match are tracked as running totals separately from investment growth, which is why the readout breaks out "Total growth" as its own line.
No. IRS annual 401(k) contribution limits change every year, so this calculator lets you model any contribution percentage without enforcing a cap. Before assuming your entered contribution is fully allowed, check the current employee deferral limit (and, if you're 50 or older, the catch-up contribution limit) at irs.gov.
A Traditional 401(k) contribution is pre-tax, which lowers your taxable income today but is taxed as ordinary income when you withdraw it in retirement; a Roth 401(k) contribution is made after-tax now, so qualified withdrawals in retirement are tax-free. This calculator projects pre-tax growth only and doesn't model either tax treatment — a dedicated IRA Calculator covering Traditional vs Roth in detail is being built as a companion tool in the same batch as this one. For a broader view that folds in other retirement savings alongside your 401(k), see the Retirement Calculator.
If your employer matches contributions up to a certain percentage of salary and you contribute less than that, you're leaving free money on the table — the unmatched portion of the match is compensation you're simply not collecting, with no market risk attached to earning it. As a rule of thumb, contribute at least enough to capture the full match before directing extra savings anywhere else, since few other places offer an equivalent guaranteed return.
Worked example: starting at age 30 with a $20,000 balance, a $70,000 salary, contributing 6% with a 50% employer match up to 6% of salary, 2% annual salary growth, and a 7% annual return, simulated year by year to age 65 (35 years) gives a projected balance at retirement of $1,383,323.24 — made up of $209,976.81 in your own contributions, $104,988.40 in employer match, and $1,068,358.03 in investment growth.