Enter your savings, contributions, and desired retirement spending — this tool works out the retirement corpus you'll need, whether your current plan gets you there, and the yearly contribution required to close any gap.
Most retirement calculators only answer half the question: how much will you have saved? This one answers both halves — it works out the total corpus you'd actually need at retirement to fund your desired spending for the rest of your life, compares that against what your current savings and contributions are projected to reach, and tells you the yearly contribution required to close any gap.
Enter your current age, retirement age, and life expectancy, along with your current savings, pre- and post-retirement rates of return, and your desired annual retirement spending in today's terms. Leave inflation blank to keep your spending figure flat, or fill it in to inflate that spending forward to the year you actually retire — spending 60,000 a year today is a very different number 30 years from now.
Your required corpus is the lump sum that, drawn down every year through retirement at your post-retirement return, exactly funds your spending until your life expectancy — ending at zero, not a guess. Leave the annual contribution field blank and the tool solves backward for the exact yearly amount you'd need to add, on top of your current savings growing at your pre-retirement return, to reach that corpus precisely. If you do enter a contribution, the tool still calculates and shows the required figure right alongside it, so you can see immediately whether you're on track or how big the gap is.
Most retirement math stops at the day you retire, showing only how your savings grow to get there. We go a step further with one additional table and functionality: below the accumulation breakdown (today until retirement — opening balance, growth, contribution, and closing balance for every year) sits a second table — the retirement spending breakdown, showing year by year, from retirement until your life expectancy, exactly how your corpus draws down: opening balance, growth at your post-retirement return, the amount withdrawn that year, and what's left. It's the piece that turns "here's a number" into "here's what actually happens to that number once you stop working and start spending it."
Nora is 35 today, plans to retire at 65, and expects to live to 90. She has 50,000 saved so far, expects an 8% return before retirement and 5% after, wants to spend 60,000 a year in today's terms, and expects 3% inflation. She leaves the contribution field blank to see what's needed.
| Figure | Amount |
|---|---|
| Spending at retirement (60,000 inflated 30 years at 3%) | 145,636 |
| Retirement corpus required | 2,052,582 |
| Future value of her current 50,000 savings | 503,133 |
| Annual contribution required | 13,678 |
Saving 13,678 a year, alongside her existing 50,000 growing at 8%, gets Nora to exactly 2,052,582 by age 65 — precisely enough, drawn down at 5% growth against 145,636 a year in spending, to reach zero right at age 90.
| Year | Age | Opening | Growth | Contribution | Closing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 36 | 50,000 | 4,000 | 13,678 | 67,678 |
| 2 | 37 | 67,678 | 5,414 | 13,678 | 86,770 |
| 3 | 38 | 86,770 | 6,942 | 13,678 | 107,389 |
| … | … | … | … | … | … |
| 28 | 63 | 1,594,157 | 127,533 | 13,678 | 1,735,367 |
| 29 | 64 | 1,735,367 | 138,829 | 13,678 | 1,887,875 |
| 30 | 65 | 1,887,875 | 151,030 | 13,678 | 2,052,582 |
Thirty years of an 8% return, compounding on top of a steady 13,678 added every year, is what carries Nora from 50,000 to exactly the 2,052,582 she needs — the last row of this table lines up precisely with the first row of the one below.
| Retirement year | Age | Opening | Growth | Withdrawal | Closing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 65 | 2,052,582 | 102,629 | 145,636 | 2,009,576 |
| 2 | 66 | 2,009,576 | 100,479 | 145,636 | 1,964,419 |
| 3 | 67 | 1,964,419 | 98,221 | 145,636 | 1,917,004 |
| … | … | … | … | … | … |
| 23 | 87 | 396,602 | 19,830 | 145,636 | 270,797 |
| 24 | 88 | 270,797 | 13,540 | 145,636 | 138,701 |
| 25 | 89 | 138,701 | 6,935 | 145,636 | 0 |
This is the spending summary in action: Nora's balance keeps earning 5% every year even while she's withdrawing from it, which is exactly why 2,052,582 is enough to fund 25 years of 145,636 annual spending rather than needing the full 3,640,900 that 25 years of spending would cost with no growth at all — and, as the last row shows, the balance lands at exactly zero in her final year, not before and not with money left over.
Disclaimer: Required corpus assumes withdrawals happen at the end of each year in retirement, discounted at your post-retirement return, and holds your spending flat through retirement itself once inflation has been applied to get you to your retirement year — this is a straightforward calculator, not a full drawdown simulation accounting for market volatility or sequence-of-returns risk. This tool is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Results are hypothetical estimates based on your inputs and do not guarantee future performance. Consult a qualified professional before making financial decisions; we accept no liability for losses arising from use of this calculator. This tool may make mistakes — please verify all results independently.