Project how much your retirement savings could grow to by your target retirement age.
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This estimate provides an approximate picture of expected retirement savings by a targeted retirement age, based on three key inputs: your current savings balance, your fixed regular monthly contribution, and an assumed annual investment return rate. The result is calculated by adding two components together: the future value of your current savings growing through compound investment returns over the remaining years until retirement, plus the future value of your entire series of ongoing monthly contributions (calculated using a standard annuity formula, since each contribution has a different amount of time remaining to grow before retirement). This estimate is genuinely very sensitive to the assumed annual return rate — a difference of even one or two percentage points in the assumed rate, compounded over several decades, can produce a substantially different projected final balance — which is why financial planning generally recommends running the projection under more than one scenario (a conservative assumption and a moderate assumption at minimum) to understand just how much the underlying return assumption itself is driving the final projected number, rather than treating any single projection as a confident guarantee.
Retirement savings projections combine two genuinely different growth engines: the compound growth of money you've already saved, and the accumulating value of contributions you haven't made yet but plan to make regularly going forward. Understanding both pieces separately clarifies why the assumed return rate matters as much as it does to the final number.
Your existing savings balance grows through straightforward compound growth — the same amount, growing at the assumed rate, for the entire remaining time horizon until retirement. Your future monthly contributions grow differently, since each individual contribution has progressively less time to compound before retirement arrives; a contribution made in year one has decades to grow, while a contribution made the year before retirement has almost no time to grow at all. This is calculated using what's called an annuity formula, which properly accounts for this staggered timing across the entire contribution series.
The assumed annual return rate is where the real sensitivity lives. Because returns compound over potentially several decades until retirement, even a modest difference in the assumed rate — say, 5% versus 7% — produces a dramatically different projected final balance over a 30-year horizon, since that difference compounds every single year rather than applying just once.
This sensitivity is exactly why financial planning generally recommends running any retirement projection under multiple scenarios rather than a single point estimate — a conservative assumption, a moderate assumption, and perhaps an optimistic one, side by side. Seeing the meaningfully different outcomes each assumption produces gives a much more honest picture of the genuine uncertainty involved than a single confident-looking number ever could.
It's also worth being clear-eyed that real investment markets don't deliver a smooth, constant annual return matching any single assumed rate — actual returns vary considerably year to year, sometimes negative, sometimes well above average, averaging out over long periods to something in the neighborhood of historical assumptions but never following the smooth compound curve a simplified projection formula assumes. This kind of tool is genuinely useful for understanding the general relationships between savings rate, time horizon, and assumed returns, but actual retirement planning decisions benefit considerably from a qualified financial advisor who can account for your complete individual circumstances, risk tolerance, and the genuine unpredictability of real markets.
This depends on your investment mix; conservative estimates are often lower, while stock-heavy portfolios historically averaged higher long-term returns — try a few scenarios.
No, this shows a nominal (non-inflation-adjusted) projection. Combine it with the Inflation Calculator to estimate real purchasing power at retirement.
No, this is an educational projection tool only. Consult a licensed financial advisor for actual retirement planning.