How long a pot lasts under regular withdrawals, no tax drag.
Pot lasts
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First-year withdrawal rate
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Final-year withdrawal
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What "drawdown" really asks
Drawdown is the retirement phase that runs in reverse. Instead of paying money in every month, you are pulling it out, and the question is whether the pot can keep up. Three forces fight each other every year. Investment growth pushes the balance up, your withdrawal pulls it down, and inflation quietly lifts the size of that withdrawal so your spending power holds. This calculator runs that tug-of-war one year at a time: it grows the balance by your expected return, takes out an inflation-adjusted withdrawal, and repeats until the money is gone or a hundred years pass. The headline result is the number of years your pot survives.
It is built for anyone living off a lump sum in the UAE, whether that pot came from a lifetime of saving, an end-of-service gratuity paid out when you left a job, or the sale of a property. It suits expatriates especially, because most have no state pension to fall back on and the gratuity plus personal savings is the whole retirement plan.
The quiet advantage: no tax on the way out
In many countries a chunk of every pension withdrawal goes to the tax authority, so a retiree has to gross up withdrawals to fund the same lifestyle. The UAE removes that drag entirely. There is no personal income tax and no individual capital gains tax, so the growth your pot earns and the money you withdraw are both yours in full. That is why this model applies a zero tax rate end to end: every dirham of return compounds and every dirham withdrawn lands in your pocket. The one caveat is structural rather than numeric. If your savings sit inside a company or an offshore holding vehicle rather than in your own name, corporate or foreign tax rules could apply, so confirm your own setup before assuming the clean zero.
A AED 3 million pot, year by year
Run the default inputs: a AED 3 million pot, a first-year withdrawal of AED 180,000, a 5 percent annual return, and 2.5 percent inflation. The calculator reports the pot lasting 23 years. The table below tracks the closing balance at a few milestones, then the final stretch where it drains away. Notice the withdrawal climbing each year as inflation compounds.
| Year | Withdrawal | Balance at year end |
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By the final year the inflation-compounded withdrawal has grown well above where it started. The pot that remained at the end of the penultimate year cannot cover it, so that is when the money runs out.
Why 6 percent runs dry but 4 percent might not
The starting withdrawal rate is the lever that decides almost everything. The default AED 180,000 on a AED 3 million pot is a 6 percent first-year rate, which the calculator confirms in its own results panel. That is comfortably above the 4 percent rule of thumb that many retirement planners use as a rough safe ceiling. At 4 percent you would start at AED 120,000 instead, and with a 5 percent return the pot would barely shrink in the early years and could last decades longer, often reaching the model’s 100-plus year ceiling. The lesson is blunt: shaving the opening withdrawal does far more for longevity than chasing a slightly higher return. Try AED 150,000 against AED 180,000 and watch the survival span jump.
The big caveat: returns are not this smooth
This is the most important thing to understand before you trust any single number. The model assumes the same return every single year. Real markets do not behave that way, and the order in which good and bad years arrive matters enormously. A run of poor returns in the first few years of retirement, while you are still withdrawing, can sink a pot that the average return alone says should be fine. That is called sequence-of-returns risk, and a constant-return calculator cannot see it. Treat the 23-year figure as a planning midpoint, not a promise, and keep a cash buffer so you are not forced to sell into a falling market.
Does the end-of-service gratuity count as my pot?
For most expatriates the gratuity is a meaningful slice of the starting pot, since it is paid as a lump sum when employment ends and there is no UAE tax on receiving it. You can drop the gratuity total straight into the starting-pot field alongside your other savings. Just remember the gratuity is a one-time payment, not an income stream, so once it is in the pot it has to last like any other capital.
Should I use a nominal or a real return?
Enter a nominal return, the headline percentage you expect your investments to earn, and let the separate inflation field do the adjusting. The calculator already raises your withdrawal by inflation each year, so if you also netted inflation out of the return you would be double counting and the pot would look worse than reality. Keep the two inputs independent: gross return in the return box, price growth in the inflation box.