Find required portfolio for any retirement income target.
Required portfolio
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Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| Withdrawal rate | Multiple of income | Required portfolio |
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The multiplier hiding behind your withdrawal rate
This calculator runs one clean piece of arithmetic: required portfolio equals your desired annual income divided by your safe withdrawal rate. Flip that division around and a withdrawal rate becomes a multiple. A 4 percent rate means you need 25 times your annual income, because 1 divided by 0.04 is 25. A 3 percent rate pushes that to 33 times. A 5 percent rate drops it to 20 times. That multiple is the single most consequential assumption in any retirement plan, and it is the reason two people with identical spending can land on target numbers that differ by a million dollars or more.
The figure you enter should be the income you want the portfolio to produce, not your full household budget. Social Security, a pension, rental income, or part-time work all reduce the slice your investments must cover. If you expect $30,000 a year from Social Security and want $80,000 total, you only need the portfolio to generate $50,000, and the required wealth falls proportionally.
Pricing an $80,000 retirement
Walk through the default inputs. You want $80,000 a year and you assume a 4 percent withdrawal rate. The table shows how the same income demand reprices as you change only the rate.
At the default 4 percent, an $80,000 income requires exactly $2 million. Tighten the rate to a more conservative 3 percent and the target jumps by two-thirds, to roughly $2.67 million. Loosen it to 5 percent and it falls to $1.6 million. Same lifestyle, a $1.07 million spread in what you need to save. The chart makes the sensitivity visible.
Why 3 percent and 5 percent change the answer so much
The classic 4 percent guideline comes from the Trinity Study, which tested a 30-year retirement funded by US stocks and bonds. If your retirement might run 40 or 50 years, as it can for someone leaving work in their forties, most researchers now favor something closer to 3.3 to 3.5 percent, which is why this tool lets you dial the rate down. On the other side, retirees with a short horizon, a pension floor, or willingness to cut spending in down markets can defend 5 percent. The rate is a statement about your time horizon and your tolerance for adjusting along the way, not a universal constant.
Where this number stops being enough
A common mistake is treating the required portfolio as a finish line and forgetting inflation keeps moving it. The income you enter is in today's dollars, so the target is too. If you are ten years from retirement, the equivalent of $80,000 then will be noticeably higher, and your savings plan has to grow into a target that itself keeps rising. Use this calculator to set the destination, then revisit it every couple of years with refreshed spending numbers.
Should I use my gross income or my spending here?
Use spending, plus taxes you will owe in retirement. Your pre-retirement gross income usually overstates the need, because you stop saving for retirement once you are retired and payroll taxes disappear. Estimate what you actually plan to spend, add a realistic tax allowance for withdrawals from traditional accounts, and feed that number in.
Does the 4 percent rule guarantee my money lasts?
No. It describes a high historical success rate over 30 years, not a guarantee. Bad early returns, a longer lifespan, or sustained high inflation can all break it. That is why pairing this target with a withdrawal-rate stress test, and keeping flexibility to trim spending in weak markets, matters more than hitting the number to the dollar.