Retirement Calculator

Figuring out how much to save for retirement is a tricky process. You need to calculate the age in which you plan on retiring, along with retirement goals and of course, your savings. Plug in your personal information, including your age, amount saved, current salary, savings rate and expected amount you will need for retirement living expenses into MyBankTracker's Retirement Calculator. Find out if you have enough to retire, and if you don't, start making adjustments to your finances now, so you can live the life you want in your golden years.

Retirement Calculator Methodology

This calculator estimates how much you'll need to save for retirement. To make sure you're thinking about the long haul, we assume you'll live to age 92. But you could live to be 100 or incur large medical bills early on in retirement that may raise your costs even further. All calculations are pre-tax.

The results offer a general idea of how much you'll need and are not intended to be investment advice. The results are presented in both future dollars (at retirement) and today's dollars, which is calculated using an inflation rate of 2.3%.

How We Calculate Your Savings Goal

First, we determine what your income will be at the time you retire by growing your current income at an annual rate of 3.8% (the inflation rate of 2.3%, plus the salary growth rate of 1.5%). We then assume you can live comfortably off of 85% of your pre-retirement income. So if you earn $100,000 the year you retire, we estimate you will need $85,000 during the first year of retirement. For each subsequent year, we increase your income need by 2.3% to keep up with inflation.

The second step is to calculate the total savings you will need at the time you retire, in order to generate enough income for each year of retirement. To do this, we determine what it would cost to purchase a fixed income annuity, with inflation-adjusted payments, using a discount rate (or rate of return) of 6%. The cost to purchase this hypothetical annuity is your target savings goal.

How We Calculate the Amount You Will Save

To figure out how much you will save by the time you retire, we first estimate your future income by growing your current income at a rate of 3.8% (the inflation rate of 2.3%, plus the salary growth rate of 1.5%). Then, we determine what the sum of your annual contributions will be between now and retirement. We assume your current savings and future contributions are invested and will earn an average annual rate of return of 6%.