Savings Withdrawal Calculator
Savings & BankingHow long a balance lasts.
Balance & withdrawals
Advanced options
You're drawing 6.0% of the balance a year — above the 4% rule of thumb, so the money runs out. To keep the balance intact you could take about $1,637 / month.
- From your balance$500,000
- From interest$313,459
Estimates only. Real accounts differ in how interest is credited, and rates, taxes and prices change over time. Not financial advice.
Balance drawdown
How the balance falls as you withdraw, with interest slowing the decline
How long it lasts under different rates
Years the balance lasts as the rate and withdrawal change
- Your plan27.1 yrs
- Rate +1%34.6 yrs
- Rate -1%23.0 yrs
- Withdraw 10% less33.1 yrs
Withdrawal schedule
| Year | Withdrawn | Interest | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ($30,000) | $19,454 | $489,454 |
| 2 | ($30,000) | $19,032 | $478,486 |
| 3 | ($30,000) | $18,593 | $467,079 |
| 4 | ($30,000) | $18,137 | $455,216 |
| 5 | ($30,000) | $17,663 | $442,879 |
| 6 | ($30,000) | $17,169 | $430,048 |
| 7 | ($30,000) | $16,656 | $416,704 |
| 8 | ($30,000) | $16,122 | $402,826 |
| 9 | ($30,000) | $15,567 | $388,393 |
| 10 | ($30,000) | $14,990 | $373,382 |
| 11 | ($30,000) | $14,389 | $357,772 |
| 12 | ($30,000) | $13,765 | $341,536 |
| 13 | ($30,000) | $13,115 | $324,652 |
| 14 | ($30,000) | $12,440 | $307,092 |
| 15 | ($30,000) | $11,738 | $288,829 |
| 16 | ($30,000) | $11,007 | $269,836 |
| 17 | ($30,000) | $10,247 | $250,084 |
| 18 | ($30,000) | $9,457 | $229,541 |
| 19 | ($30,000) | $8,636 | $208,176 |
| 20 | ($30,000) | $7,781 | $185,957 |
| 21 | ($30,000) | $6,892 | $162,849 |
| 22 | ($30,000) | $5,968 | $138,817 |
| 23 | ($30,000) | $5,007 | $113,824 |
| 24 | ($30,000) | $4,007 | $87,831 |
| 25 | ($30,000) | $2,967 | $60,798 |
| 26 | ($30,000) | $1,886 | $32,684 |
| 27 | ($30,000) | $761 | $3,445 |
| 27.2 | ($3,459) | $14 | $0 |
How this is worked out
- You begin with $500,000 and take out $2,500 / month.
- The balance keeps earning 4.00% a year, compounded Monthly.
- At that pace it lasts 27 yrs 1 mo, running dry around Mar 2053.
- Over the whole period you withdraw $813,459, of which $313,459 is interest the balance earned along the way.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Projection only. Actual APY, posting dates, compounding, taxes, withdrawal rules, deposit protection, and fees depend on the financial institution and country.
- 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 starting balance — the pot of money you plan to draw from.
- 02
Set how much you take out and how often: monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly.
- 03
Add the interest rate the balance keeps earning while you spend it, and how often that interest is credited.
- 04
Open Advanced to layer in tax on interest, a monthly account fee, an inflation rate, and a yearly increase in the amount you withdraw.
- 05
Read the headline — how many years the money lasts and roughly when it runs dry — alongside the drawdown chart and the year-by-year table.
- 06
Flip the mode to answer the reverse questions: the withdrawal, the starting balance, or the rate you would need to make the money last a chosen number of years.
Formula
The tool advances the balance in one-month steps. Within each step it posts interest, deducts any account fee, and removes the withdrawal due that month: new balance = old balance + interest − fee − withdrawal. Interest lands on the account's compounding schedule at a per-period rate of (1 + APY)^(1 / n) − 1, with n being how many times interest is paid each year — set so an untouched balance climbs by the full APY annually, whatever n is. The money is exhausted in the first month a scheduled withdrawal can no longer be met in full; any interest still owed is credited before that final part-withdrawal. Escalating withdrawals grow once a year, and the reverse modes search for the withdrawal, balance or rate that makes the run last the target number of years.
Example
Say you retire with 500,000 saved, leave it earning 4% APY compounded monthly, and draw 2,500 a month. That is a 6% first-year withdrawal rate — above the 4% rule of thumb — so the balance is being spent faster than interest can replace it. The calculator projects the pot lasting about 27 years (325 months). Over that time you withdraw roughly 813,000 in total, of which about 313,000 is interest the balance earned while it was being drawn down; the rest is your original 500,000. Trim the draw to about 1,637 a month — roughly the interest a 500,000 balance earns each month at 4% — and interest keeps pace, so the balance holds steady and the money never runs out. Ask the reverse question instead — 'what makes this last 30 years?' — and the tool returns a 2,367 monthly withdrawal, a 528,000 starting balance, or a 4.48% rate.
Definitions
- Drawdown
- The process of spending down a savings balance over time by taking money out faster than it comes in.
- Depletion date
- The point at which the balance first cannot cover a full withdrawal — when the money effectively runs out.
- Withdrawal rate
- The amount you take out in a year as a percentage of the starting balance. A 20,000 draw from 500,000 is a 4% withdrawal rate.
- The 4% rule
- A retirement rule of thumb that drawing about 4% of a balance a year (rising with inflation) tends to last roughly 30 years. It comes from stock-and-bond portfolios, so treat it as a rough guide for a savings account, not a guarantee.
- Sustainable withdrawal
- The largest regular withdrawal that interest can fully cover, leaving the balance intact indefinitely. Roughly the balance times the after-tax yield.
- APY
- Annual percentage yield — the effective interest a balance earns in a year once compounding is counted. It is the yearly growth of an untouched balance.
- Compounding frequency
- How often the interest a balance earns is credited and begins earning in turn — for example daily, monthly, quarterly or annually. Finer compounding helps a little during drawdown.
- Real value
- A future amount expressed in today's money, after removing the effect of inflation, so you can see what it would genuinely purchase.
- Escalating withdrawal
- A withdrawal that rises by a set percentage each year — often used to keep spending power level as prices climb.
- Sequence risk
- The danger that large withdrawals early on shrink the balance before interest can work, shortening how long the money lasts.
- Principal
- Your own money in the account — the starting balance and any deposits — as distinct from the interest it earns.
Good to know
What this calculator answers
Most savings tools ask how a balance grows. This one asks the opposite, and arguably more urgent, question: if you keep taking money out, how long before it is gone? That question sits at the heart of retirement spending, living off an inheritance or a redundancy payout, running down an emergency fund between jobs, or drawing an income from a lump sum. The answer hinges on a tug-of-war. Every withdrawal pulls the balance down; every interest payment pushes it back up. Whichever force is stronger decides whether the pot shrinks to zero on a knowable date or holds its ground and lasts as long as you need it to. By modelling both sides month by month — and folding in the taxes, fees and rising costs that eat into real life — the calculator turns a vague worry into a concrete timeline you can plan around.
The drawdown math, in plain terms
Picture the balance as a bucket with a slow tap filling it and a ladle scooping it out. The tap is interest: each period the account adds a slice of growth. The ladle is your withdrawal. Starting from your balance, the calculator repeats a simple step for every month: add the interest earned, take off any account fee, then take out the scheduled withdrawal. Whatever is left carries into the next month and earns interest in turn. If the ladle is smaller than the tap, the bucket keeps filling. If it is larger, the level drops — slowly at first, because a big balance still earns meaningful interest, then faster as the balance and its interest both shrink. The run ends in the month the bucket cannot fill the ladle; you get one last, smaller scoop and the schedule closes. Because the tool tracks the actual balance each month rather than using a rough average, the totals reconcile to the last unit: your starting balance plus all interest earned, minus tax, fees and everything withdrawn, equals zero on the depletion date.
Withdrawal rate and the 4% rule of thumb
The single most useful number for judging whether a plan is sensible is the withdrawal rate: the amount you take out in a year divided by your starting balance. Draw 20,000 a year from 500,000 and your withdrawal rate is 4%. That figure matters because of a famous piece of retirement research suggesting that spending about 4% of a balance in the first year, then raising it with inflation, historically lasted around three decades. It is worth knowing where that rule comes from. It was derived from portfolios of stocks and bonds, which earn more than a savings account but swing up and down. A plain savings balance earns a steadier, usually lower return, so the 4% figure is a rough compass rather than a precise map. In a period of high savings rates it may understate what you can safely take; in a low-rate stretch it may overstate it. The calculator shows your withdrawal rate front and centre and warns when it drifts above 4%, but the honest answer to 'what is safe for me' always comes from your own rate and horizon, which is exactly what the tool computes.
How interest buys you time
Interest is the reason a drawdown lasts longer than simple division would suggest. Spend 500,000 at 2,500 a month with no interest and it is gone in 200 months — just under 17 years. Add a 4% return and the same withdrawal stretches to about 27 years. Those extra ten years are pure interest, earned on money you had not yet spent. The effect compounds on itself: the longer the balance stays high, the more interest it throws off, which keeps the balance high for longer still. That is why the rate is such a powerful lever, and why small rate differences that look trivial on a savings comparison page translate into years at the end of a drawdown. Push the rate high enough and something striking happens — the interest earned each month equals or beats the amount you withdraw, the balance stops falling, and the money lasts indefinitely. The threshold where that flips is your sustainable withdrawal, and the calculator reports it so you can see how close your plan sits to the line between running out and lasting forever.
Compounding frequency: a small but real difference
It is tempting to think that compounding daily instead of yearly will dramatically extend a drawdown. It will not, and it helps to understand why. The rate you enter is an APY — an effective annual yield — which already bakes in whatever compounding the account uses. Over a full year with no withdrawals, a balance grows by exactly that APY whether interest is credited once or 365 times. What compounding frequency changes is timing within the year. With yearly crediting, interest arrives in one lump at year end, so any withdrawals you make during the year come out of a balance that has not yet been paid its interest. With monthly crediting, interest lands sooner and starts cushioning withdrawals earlier. Under a steady drawdown that timing edge accumulates, so finer compounding does make the money last a little longer — but over decades the gap is usually measured in months, not years. The calculator models this faithfully rather than ignoring it, which is why switching from annual to monthly compounding nudges the result instead of transforming it.
Taxes, fees and the leaks in the bucket
Interest and withdrawals are the headline forces, but two quieter drains can meaningfully shorten a plan. The first is tax on interest. In most places the interest a savings balance earns is taxable, and the tool charges that tax as the interest is credited — so it never gets to compound. A 22% tax on a 4% yield behaves a lot like earning closer to 3%, and that gap shows up as a shorter runway. The second is account fees. A flat monthly maintenance fee is small next to a large balance, but it comes off every single month for the life of the drawdown, and it bites hardest late on when the balance is low and the fee is a bigger share of it. Enter both in Advanced and the schedule breaks out exactly how much tax and how many fees are taken each year, so you can see whether shopping for a no-fee, tax-efficient account is worth the trouble. Often it is: a fee-free account or a tax-sheltered wrapper can add surprisingly many months to the end of a drawdown.
Inflation and keeping your spending power level
A withdrawal that looks generous today will feel thinner in fifteen years, because the same amount of money buys less as prices rise. The calculator lets you handle this in two complementary ways. First, turn on an inflation rate and the tool shows your balance in today's money alongside the headline figure, so you can judge what the remaining pot would actually be worth. Second, use the withdrawal-increase option to grow your withdrawal by a set percentage each year, which is how a real retiree protects their standard of living. The trade-off is unavoidable: rising withdrawals empty the account sooner. There is also a subtle but important consequence worth flagging — once your withdrawals grow every year, no fixed interest rate can make the money last forever, because a rising outflow will eventually overtake any steady inflow. If lasting indefinitely is your goal, either hold the withdrawal flat or keep its growth below what interest can absorb.
Working backwards: solving for what you need
Forward projection answers 'how long will this last?' Just as often, though, you know the finish line and need to work back to the inputs. The calculator's reverse modes do exactly that against the same engine. 'Safe withdrawal' takes your balance, rate and a target number of years, and returns the largest amount you can take each period so the money lasts precisely that long — the natural question for anyone budgeting a fixed pot over a known retirement. 'Balance needed' fixes the withdrawal and rate and finds the starting pot required to reach the target, which is how you set a savings goal for a future drawdown. 'Rate needed' holds the balance and withdrawal and finds the return that would stretch the plan to your horizon, useful for judging whether a better account or a different mix could close a gap. Each of these is solved by searching for the value that makes the month-by-month simulation land on your target, so a reverse answer always agrees with the forward projection when you plug it back in. When a target is impossible — for instance, asking what rate makes a tiny balance support a huge withdrawal for thirty years — the tool says so plainly rather than returning a misleading number.
Practical ways to make savings last longer
A few levers move the needle more than others, and the calculator makes it easy to test each one. Lowering the withdrawal has the most direct effect, and even a modest trim early can add years, because the money you leave in keeps earning. Chasing a higher rate is the next most powerful move; because interest compounds against the withdrawals, a rate improvement pays off far more here than it would on a balance you simply leave to grow. Cutting fees and using tax-efficient accounts plugs the slow leaks. Delaying the start of withdrawals, or pausing them in years you do not need the income, lets interest build a bigger base to draw from later. And matching your withdrawal frequency to when you actually need the cash — taking less, more often — keeps more of the balance invested for longer. Run your own numbers through the tool, save a few scenarios, and compare them side by side: seeing 'lasts 22 years' next to 'lasts 31 years' for two plausible plans is usually all it takes to make the right call obvious.
Frequently asked questions
How long will my savings last if I withdraw a fixed amount each month?
Three inputs decide it: the size of the balance, how much you withdraw, and the rate it keeps earning. Enter those and the calculator steps through the balance month by month and reports the precise number of years and months before it empties. As a quick sense-check, 500,000 drawn at 2,500 a month with 4% interest lasts about 27 years; drop the rate to 0% and the same draw lasts under 17.
What is a safe withdrawal rate?
A safe withdrawal rate is a pace of spending a balance can sustain for a long horizon without running dry too soon. The widely quoted figure is around 4% of the starting balance a year. This tool flags your first-year withdrawal rate and warns when it climbs above 4%, but the right number for you depends on how long the money must last and how much interest it earns.
Does the 4% rule apply to a savings account?
Only loosely. The 4% rule was built for diversified investment portfolios over a 30-year retirement, where returns are higher but bounce around. A savings account earns a steadier, usually lower rate, so 4% may be conservative in a high-rate environment and optimistic in a low one. Use it as a starting reference, then let the calculator show what your actual rate supports.
How much does the interest rate change how long my money lasts?
A lot — it is the biggest lever after the withdrawal itself. Interest quietly refills the pot each month, so a higher rate can add years of runway. Push the rate high enough that interest matches your withdrawal and the balance stops falling altogether: the money then lasts forever. The scenario bars show exactly how a one-point move in the rate shifts the finish line.
Why does changing the compounding frequency barely move the result?
Because the APY you enter already fixes the yearly yield, monthly, quarterly or yearly crediting all grow an untouched balance by the same amount over a year. The only difference is timing: with coarser compounding, interest lands later relative to your withdrawals, so the balance runs down a touch faster. Over decades that is usually a matter of months, not years — real, but small.
How do taxes on interest affect the drawdown?
Tax is charged on the interest as it is credited, so it lowers the amount that actually stays in the account and compounds. That shortens how long the balance lasts. Enter your marginal rate on savings interest in Advanced and the schedule shows the tax taken each year and the reduced runway.
What does the 'withdrawal increase' option do?
It grows your withdrawal by a set percentage every year, which is how people keep their spending power level as prices rise. It also means the balance runs out sooner, because you are taking more each year. Importantly, once withdrawals grow every year, no fixed interest rate can make the money last forever.
Can my savings ever last forever?
Yes — if the interest earned each period is at least as large as the money you take out plus any fees, the balance holds steady or grows and never depletes. That happens when your withdrawal rate is at or below the after-tax yield. The tool shows 'never runs out' and marks the plan sustainable when you are in that zone.
How is the depletion date worked out?
The calculator counts the months from your chosen first-withdrawal date until the balance can no longer cover a full withdrawal, then adds that many months to the start date. Change the start date in Advanced and the projected run-out date moves with it.
How is this different from a retirement calculator?
A retirement calculator usually models a whole portfolio, variable market returns, Social Security or a pension, and life expectancy. This tool answers a narrower, more precise question: given one balance earning a steady rate and a regular withdrawal, exactly how long does the money last? It is ideal for an emergency fund, a cash bridge, or the cash sleeve of a broader plan.
What happens when the balance can't cover a full withdrawal?
That final month is the depletion point. The tool credits any interest still owed, pays out whatever is left as a smaller last withdrawal, and stops. The schedule shows this partial final period so the totals reconcile exactly.
Can I solve for the withdrawal, balance, or rate I need?
Yes. Switch the mode at the top. 'Safe withdrawal' finds the most you can take to last a target number of years; 'Balance needed' finds the starting pot that lasts that long; 'Rate needed' finds the interest rate that stretches your plan to the target. Each search is run against the same month-by-month engine, so the answer is consistent with the forward projection.