Retirement Withdrawal Calculator
The portfolio, the income, and how long it has to last
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Long-range scenario, not a guarantee. Small changes in returns, inflation, fees, taxes, and withdrawal timing can materially change the result.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter the portfolio value the day you retire, then your age when the withdrawals start and the age you are planning to. The whole answer is the span between those two ages — 95 is a planning horizon rather than a forecast, since a 65-year-old today averages about 84 and one in four reaches 90.
- 02
Enter the annual withdrawal in today's dollars. This is what leaves the portfolio, before tax, and the page raises it every year instead of holding it flat.
- 03
Set the expected annual return before inflation and the inflation you index the withdrawal to. The gap between them is what decides whether the balance grows: 6% against 3%, once a 0.40% fee comes off, is 2.52% of real compounding.
- 04
Add the Social Security or pension you expect, per year in today's dollars, and the age it starts. On the run below it carries 58% of everything spent across the retirement, and the gap years before it begins do most of the damage.
- 05
Open Advanced options for the three assumptions that move the answer next — the fees you pay, the annual increase on that income (Social Security got 2.8% for 2026; most private pensions get nothing), and how fast real spending falls, the retirement smile at about 1% a year. Then read the depletion age, the spending that would last exactly to your plan age, and the year-by-year table underneath.
Formula
Each year, in order: the withdrawal comes out first and what is left grows — annuity-due, because that is how a retiree actually lives, taking January's money in January. Year t's withdrawal is your opening figure × (1 − the spending decline)^t × (1 + inflation)^t. Two factors, not one, which is why $54,000 indexed at 3% with a 1% real decline reaches $100,812 in the final year of a 33-year run rather than the $139,054 inflation alone would give. Social Security or a pension pays from its start age at your figure × (1 + its COLA)^t and covers that year's spending first; the portfolio funds only the shortfall. The remaining balance then earns your return less your fee — 6.00% less 0.40% is 5.60%, and against 3% inflation that is 2.52% in real terms. The first year is the whole arithmetic in miniature: $850,000 − $54,000 = $796,000, × 1.056 = $840,576. The depletion age is the first year the portfolio cannot cover its shortfall. The sustainable-spending figure is not a formula at all — the page re-runs the entire simulation and bisects on the withdrawal until the balance lands on zero exactly at your plan age, because a closed form cannot express an income stream that starts part-way through.
Example
$850,000 at 62, spending $54,000 a year, a 6% return with 0.40% of fees, 3% inflation, $30,000 of Social Security from 67 rising 2.8% a year, and real spending easing 1% a year. Year one takes the whole $54,000 from the portfolio — the benefit has not started — leaving $796,000 to grow at 5.60% to $840,576, a first-year draw of 6.35%. The balance falls for five years and then turns: at 67 the benefit is $34,442 in nominal terms against $59,533 of spending, so the portfolio funds only $25,091 and starts growing again. It never runs out. At 95 there is $1,795,838 left, $677,078 of it in today's money, and across the run the portfolio contributed $1,041,872 against $1,435,171 from Social Security — 58% of every dollar spent. Set that benefit to zero and the same portfolio runs dry at 84.3. Keep it and you could spend $68,931 a year, $14,931 more than you entered, before the balance would land on zero exactly at 95.
Definitions
- Depletion age
- The age at which the portfolio can no longer cover the year's shortfall between spending and other income. It is an age rather than a year count because the answer moves with when Social Security starts, not only with how big the pot is.
- Real return
- What the portfolio earns after fees and after inflation: (1 + return − fee) ÷ (1 + inflation) − 1. A 6% return with 0.40% of fees against 3% inflation is 2.52% real, and that figure — not the 6% — is what compounds against an indexed withdrawal.
- Retirement smile
- The observed pattern that real spending falls through the seventies and eighties before care costs push it back up. Modelled here as a constant annual decline in real terms, about 1% a year, applied on top of inflation indexing.
Good to know
The answer is an age, and that is not a stylistic choice
Almost every drawdown calculator answers in years: your money lasts 23 years. That is the wrong unit, because the thing you are actually asking is whether the money outlives you, and years only become an answer once they are added to the age you retire at. Worse, a year count hides the input that moves the result most. On this page a $850,000 portfolio funding $54,000 a year of spending runs dry at 84.3 — or never runs dry at all and finishes with $1,795,838 at 95. The difference between those two futures is not the portfolio, the return, the inflation rate or the spending. It is $30,000 a year of Social Security starting at 67. Nothing else on the form is worth a decade. That is why the page insists on the second age, and why a portfolio-only projection reads so much bleaker than the retirement most US households actually get: for the median household the benefit is not a supplement to the plan, it is most of the plan, and the portfolio is the thing that bridges the years before it and tops it up afterwards. Read the depletion age alongside the sustainable-spending figure underneath it, which answers the same question from the other end: at $850,000 with that benefit, spending $68,931 a year — $14,931 more than the $54,000 entered — would land the balance exactly on zero at 95. If your entered spending is above that figure the plan fails; if it is below, the gap is your margin. Both numbers move together, and both are far more sensitive to the claiming age than to anything you can control about markets.
An indexed withdrawal is a different animal from a fixed one
The single largest modelling difference between this page and a generic savings-withdrawal schedule is that the cheque rises. Hold the withdrawal flat in dollars and the arithmetic is gentle: $850,000 with no other income funds $54,000 a year to 95 and still leaves $535,584. Index that identical withdrawal at 3% and the same portfolio runs dry at 84.3. One field, eleven years. The reason is that inflation compounds against you in exactly the years you have the least ability to respond — the final decade of a thirty-year retirement costs roughly double the first, and by year 33 the $54,000 has become $100,812 on this page's assumptions. A fixed-dollar model does not say 'we are ignoring inflation'; it silently assumes you accept a real pay cut every year for thirty years, which nobody plans to do and nobody notices being modelled. There is a second factor in the same expression, and it pulls the other way. Spending in retirement does not stay flat in real terms: households in their seventies and eighties travel less, run one car instead of two, and spend measurably less than they did at 62 before care costs push it back up at the end. The page models that as a constant real decline — the retirement smile — of about 1% a year, applied on top of the inflation indexing. It is worth real money: with the decline set to zero the same run's final-year withdrawal is $139,054 rather than $100,812, and the depletion age without Social Security moves from 84.3 to 81.7. Both factors are honest and they do not cancel. The one to be suspicious of is the smile, because it is an average across a population and the households it fits worst are the ones facing a long care event at the end. If the plan only works with the smile switched on, it is a plan resting on an assumption about your health.
Social Security is the plan, and the gap years are where plans break
Two fields on this page carry the benefit: the annual amount and the age it starts. The second is the one people underweight. Retire at 62 and claim at 67 and you have five years in which the portfolio funds one hundred percent of your spending, at the highest real withdrawal rate you will ever take, and those are also the years a bad market does the most damage. On the default run the balance falls for exactly those five years and then turns upward the moment the benefit arrives — from 67 the portfolio only has to find $25,091 of a $59,533 spending year, and it starts growing again. That shape, a dip and a recovery, is what a well-built retirement looks like, and it is completely invisible on a page that models the portfolio alone. The other thing the second field does is force a decision you should make deliberately: claiming earlier permanently reduces the benefit and claiming later permanently raises it, so the amount and the start age are not independent, and this page takes both as given rather than computing the trade-off. Settle that on the Social Security page first, then bring the answer here. The Advanced panel holds a third field that belongs to the same subject: the annual increase on that income. Social Security receives a cost-of-living adjustment every January — 2.8% for 2026 — and most private pensions receive nothing at all. That distinction is worth more than it looks. On the default run, setting the increase to zero while everything else stays put cuts the ending balance from $1,795,838 to $673,033. A flat pension of $30,000 buys about 38% of what it buys today by the end of a 33-year run at 3% inflation, while your own withdrawal has been indexed the whole way. If your outside income is a private pension, set that field to zero and look at the answer honestly; if it is Social Security, leave it near the COLA and remember that the benefit is one of very few inflation-indexed income streams an American can own.
What one deterministic run cannot tell you
Every year in this simulation earns exactly the same return, and that is the assumption to hold most lightly. Real markets deliver the same average in an order, and the order decides whether a retiree drawing down survives it — a bad first decade while you are selling to fund spending is the one shape from which there is no recovery, because the good years arrive to compound a much smaller pile. This page will not show you that; the sequence page will, and it should be the next thing you open once this one says yes. Two more things are absent and both are large. Tax: the withdrawal here is what leaves the account, not what reaches your bank, and a dollar from a traditional IRA is ordinary income, a dollar from a brokerage account is a partial capital gain, and a dollar from a Roth is neither — so two households with the same balance and the same spending can face very different gross withdrawals. And required minimum distributions, which from 73 take the choice away: money comes out of the pre-tax accounts on a schedule set by regulation whether the plan wanted it or not, and it is taxed as ordinary income on top of the benefit. Beyond those: a long-term care event, an inheritance, a mortgage paid off part-way through, and the market falling 30% in your second year. What the page IS good for is comparison. Change one field at a time and read the movement rather than the level. Two points of return is not a rounding error; a 0.40% fee against a 1% fee moves the ending balance from $1,795,838 to $1,334,853 on identical everything else; and the sustainable-spending figure is the cleanest summary of the whole plan, because it converts every assumption you made into one number you can compare against what you actually spend. Then test the plan against a worse return than you expect rather than the one you hope for. Nobody knows which they will get, and only one of the two errors is recoverable.
Frequently asked questions
How long will my money last in retirement?
It depends far more on the other income than on the size of the pot, which is why the answer here is an age rather than a number of years. Take $850,000 at 62, spending $54,000 a year indexed to 3% inflation, a 6% return less 0.40% of fees, and $30,000 of Social Security from 67: the portfolio never runs out, funding the whole run to 95 and still holding $1,795,838. Halve the portfolio to $500,000 and the same plan runs dry at 86.4, eight and a half years short. Raise it to $1,000,000 and the ending balance is $2,701,572.
Should I include Social Security, and what does the start age do?
Include it — leaving it out is the single most common way to frighten yourself. That same $850,000 spending $54,000 a year runs dry at 84.3 with the field at zero, and lasts past 95 with $30,000 a year stacked in from 67. The start age matters almost as much as the amount: the five years between retiring at 62 and claiming at 67 are funded entirely by the portfolio, which is why the balance falls for five years before it turns.
What plan-to age should I use?
Longer than you expect to live, because the cost of the two errors is not symmetric. A 65-year-old averages about 84 and one in four reaches 90; for a couple the odds that at least one of them sees 90 are better than even. Planning to 95 and dying at 84 leaves an estate. Planning to 84 and living to 95 leaves eleven years to fund from Social Security alone. Move the field a few years either way and watch the sustainable-spending figure move — that is the real price of the assumption.
Why is this shorter than a calculator that keeps the withdrawal flat?
Because the withdrawal here rises with prices and most simple drawdown pages hold it fixed in dollars, which is not how anyone lives. Set inflation to 0 with no Social Security and $850,000 funds $54,000 a year all the way to 95 and leaves $535,584. Index the identical withdrawal at 3% and it runs dry at 84.3. Nothing else changed. A fixed-dollar model quietly assumes you take a pay cut every year for thirty years.
What do the fee and the retirement smile fields actually do?
The fee comes straight off the return every year. Move it from 0.40% to 1% — an ordinary advice fee on top of ordinary funds — and the ending balance falls from $1,795,838 to $1,334,853, while the depletion age without Social Security moves from 84.3 to 82.7. The smile is the evidence that households spend less in real terms through their seventies: at 1% a year the final-year withdrawal is $100,812 rather than the $139,054 inflation alone would give, and turning it off moves that same no-Social-Security depletion age from 84.3 to 81.7. It is well evidenced and it is also the first assumption to check if the answer looks comfortable, because the smile turns back up when care costs arrive.
What is not in this answer?
Tax, first of all: the withdrawal is what leaves the account, not what reaches your bank, and a dollar from a traditional IRA, a brokerage account and a Roth are three different amounts of money. Then required minimum distributions from 73, which take the choice away; a long-term care event; and the biggest one, the fact that every year here earns exactly the same return. Real markets do not, and the order they arrive in moves the depletion age by years. Treat the age as the middle of a range, not a date.