Will the portfolio outlive you, or the other way around?
Enter what you have, what you'll spend, and what Social Security will cover. You get two answers: the average path year-by-year, and how that same plan holds up if the first five retirement years are bad — the shape of sequence-of-returns risk, in today's dollars.
Background Read the Social Security guideA bad first 5 yrs costs you — by age 100.
A bad start runs you dry 5 yrs sooner.
Even an average return runs out at age —
Save — to reach — by age 65.
Source: your expected return held constant after retirement, monthly compounding at r/12; stress path overrides the first 5 retirement years with −5% real returns before reverting.
Source: your balance plus a constant monthly contribution, compounded monthly at the real return (return minus inflation); the nest egg is the Rule of 25 — (spending − Social Security) × 25, all in today's dollars.
Spending eases to — near age 84, then climbs.
The gold curve is the spending smile; the flat line is a constant budget for life. Same first-year spending — the smile just lets the middle years dip.Source: your budget held flat vs. Blanchett's modeled retirement-spending curve (real spending falls to a trough near age 84, then recovers toward its starting level by the mid-90s as healthcare rises). All in today's dollars.
Estimates only. The main answer uses your constant expected return; the stress companion overrides the first five retirement years with −5% real returns to show sequence-of-returns risk before reverting to your expected return. Pre-retirement contributions are spread evenly across each year and compound monthly (the site-wide convention); the step-up rate raises next year's amount, and contributions stop the year retirement starts. Social Security uses FRA 67 (everyone born 1960+); claim-age adjustments follow SSA's published reduction/credit rules — if your FRA is 66, the early-claim cuts are slightly smaller than shown. Withdrawal taxes (Traditional 401(k), SS above modest thresholds) aren't modeled — if your portfolio is mostly pre-tax, plan on a 15–25% haircut to the headline. The calculator also doesn't model: required minimum distributions starting at age 73 (born 1951–59) or 75 (born 1960+), the pre-Medicare insurance gap if you retire before 65 ($700–1,500/mo per person on the ACA marketplace), pensions, spousal/survivor Social Security, part-time income, or rental income — offset your annual spending manually if any of these apply. Use this for direction-finding, not for picking a precise retirement date.
Estimates only. The nest-egg target is the Rule of 25 — the classic 4% safe-withdrawal rate (Bengen) expressed as a ×25 multiple — applied to your spending net of Social Security, all in today's dollars. The required monthly is a constant real (inflation-adjusted) contribution, compounded monthly at your return minus inflation; in practice you'd raise the dollar amount with your income each year to hold that purchasing power. The 4% rule is a starting heuristic, not a guarantee — sequence-of-returns risk, taxes on pre-tax withdrawals, healthcare, and a longer-than-planned retirement all argue for a margin above the bare target. Social Security here uses your claim-age-adjusted benefit in today's dollars and assumes it keeps pace with inflation. Use this to size the habit, then switch to "Will it last?" to stress-test the result.
Real vs. nominal dollars Spend numbers stay in today's dollars.
A "$60,000/year retirement" twenty years from now is not $60,000 of today's groceries — it'd be ~$110,000 of nominal dollars to buy the same cart. The calculator keeps the spending box in today's dollars and inflates internally, so the headline numbers stay comparable to your current paycheck.
- Real return ≈ return − inflation. What actually grows your purchasing power. A 6.5% nominal return with 3% inflation is ~3.4% real growth — your money is doubling every ~21 years in real terms, not 11.
- SS has COLA. Social Security adjusts annually for inflation, so its real value is roughly stable. The calculator treats your benefit input as today's dollars and inflates it forward.
- Pre-tax vs. post-tax. Withdrawals from Traditional 401(k)s/IRAs are taxed as ordinary income. Roth withdrawals aren't. Your "$60,000 spend" should be the gross number — what hits your account before taxes — if most of your savings is Traditional. See the Roth vs. Traditional guide for the tax-timing detail.
Think of the portfolio as a bucket leaking at a constant rate. SS is a small refill that turns on at age 62–70. The question is whether the bucket can keep up with the leak until you don't need it anymore.
How Social Security shows up Every dollar of SS is one less from the portfolio.
Social Security and portfolio withdrawals fund the same spending — they just trade off. If you spend $60k and SS covers $24k, the portfolio only has to produce $36k. That's the lever delaying SS pulls: the longer you wait (up to age 70), the bigger SS is, and the smaller the portfolio draw stays for the rest of your life.
- Claiming early at 62 cuts your benefit by roughly 30% versus your Full Retirement Age (66–67 for most people).
- Claiming at FRA gives you 100% of your earned benefit — the baseline number on your SSA statement.
- Delaying past FRA to age 70 earns 8% per year in delayed retirement credits — about 24% more than your FRA amount.
- The break-even age for delaying is usually mid-80s. If you live longer than that, delaying wins by a lot. If you don't, claiming early wins.
The full picture is in the Social Security guide.
The 4% rule, in one paragraph A starting rate, not a guarantee.
The "4% rule" came from a 1994 study (Bengen) showing that a portfolio could sustain a 4% initial withdrawal — adjusted upward for inflation each year — through any 30-year retirement window in U.S. history. It's a useful starting heuristic, not a law. It assumed a 50/50 stock/bond mix, U.S.-only data, and a fixed 30-year horizon.
- Sequence of returns matters more than the average. A bad first decade can sink a "safe" plan; a good first decade can rescue an aggressive one.
- Flexible spending raises the safe rate. If you'll cut back in bad years, you can start higher (4.5–5%). If your spending is fixed (debt, healthcare floor), start lower (3.5%).
- Longer horizons need lower rates. A 40+ year retirement (FIRE) typically uses ~3.25–3.5% as the durable rate.
- The "Bad first 5 yrs" row addresses sequence risk directly. It re-runs the same plan with −5% real returns for the first five retirement years (roughly the 2000–2002 + 2008 sequence), then reverts. The gap between the two answers is how much sequence-of-returns risk is hiding inside an average-case plan.
Spending isn't a flat line Most people spend in a smile, not a straight line.
The flat-budget assumption is tidy, but it isn't what most retirees do. When you study how households actually spend, real (inflation-adjusted) spending tends to ease down through the middle of retirement and then tick back up at the very end — a shape researchers call the "spending smile." Flip the Spending over time control to Smile and the calculator follows that curve instead of a straight line.
- Go-go years (roughly 65–75). Newly free and still healthy — travel, projects, time with family and grandkids. This is the high-water mark, and your first-year budget anchors here.
- Slow-go years (roughly 75–85). The pace naturally eases. Big trips taper, the house is paid down, and real spending drifts lower — bottoming out around a quarter below where you started.
- No-go years (85+). Most days are close to home, but healthcare takes a bigger share of the budget, so spending climbs back toward where it began.
- Why it matters. Assuming a flat budget for thirty years is the cautious choice — it usually overstates what you need. Modeling the smile can show the portfolio lasting longer, or room to spend a little more in the early years you're healthy enough to enjoy. Just don't lean on it to under-save: the late-life healthcare bump is real and uneven, which is what an emergency reserve and long-term-care planning are for.
The curve here follows the pattern Blanchett documented in Exploring the Retirement Consumption Puzzle (2014): a gentle decline to a low point near age 84, then a recovery toward the starting level by the mid-90s. It's an average across many households — yours will have its own shape — so treat it as a more honest default than the flat line, not a personal forecast.
Caveats What this calculator doesn't model.
- Sequence-of-returns risk. Constant 6.5% looks fine on paper. Real markets compress 6.5% out of years like −20%, +28%, +5%, −10% — and the order of those years matters enormously in the early withdrawal phase.
- Taxes on withdrawals. Traditional 401(k)/IRA withdrawals add to ordinary income; SS is partially taxed; Roth is not. Your "spend" needs to include whatever taxes you'll owe.
- Healthcare cost shock. Long-term care can run $100k+/yr. A small annual reserve doesn't cover it; that's a separate insurance/family conversation.
- Pensions, annuities, RMDs. Not modeled. RMDs (Required Minimum Distributions) start at age 73–75 from Traditional accounts and may force larger withdrawals than you wanted, with tax consequences.
- Spousal benefits. If married, your SS strategy interacts with your spouse's. The rules are worth a planner conversation if the dollars are large.