Enter your age, savings, contribution, and employer match to project your balance at retirement — in nominal and inflation-adjusted terms, with an estimated retirement income.
Cumulative contributions (yours + employer match) vs. projected balance, year by year.
| Year | Contributed (cumulative) | Balance | Growth |
|---|
Enter your employer's match as a percentage of your own contribution, and a monthly dollar cap — this covers common structures like "50% match up to 6% of salary" once you convert that into a monthly dollar cap yourself (e.g., 6% of a $5,000 monthly salary is $300, so a 50% match caps at $150/month). The calculator adds the matched amount on top of your own contribution every month before compounding.
A commonly cited starting point (the "4% rule," from the Trinity study) for how much you can withdraw annually from a retirement portfolio without a high risk of running out of money over a typical 30-year retirement. It's a rule of thumb, not a guarantee — actual safe rates depend heavily on market returns during your specific retirement years (sequence-of-returns risk) and how long your retirement actually lasts, so many planners now suggest 3–3.5% for extra safety margin.
The nominal figure is the actual future dollar amount your account will show; the real figure discounts that by your assumed inflation rate to show what it's worth in today's purchasing power. A headline "$1.5 million at retirement" sounds very different once you see it's worth roughly $650,000 in today's terms after 35 years of 3% inflation.
The underlying math — contributions compounding over time, with an optional employer match — is universal and applies to any retirement account: a UK workplace pension, an Indian NPS or EPF, an Australian superannuation fund, or a plain taxable brokerage account earmarked for retirement. Only the specific tax treatment and contribution limits are country- and account-specific, which this calculator intentionally doesn't model, since they vary too much and change frequently.
Worked example: starting at age 30 with $20,000 saved, contributing $500/month with a 50% employer match capped at $250/month (so $750/month total), at an assumed 7% return over 35 years to age 65, projects to roughly $1.58 million nominal — worth about $562,000 in today's purchasing power at 3% inflation. At a 4% withdrawal rate, that supports about $63,000/year in nominal retirement income.