How Long Will My Money Last Calculator

A money-last calculator models the drawdown phase: you already have savings, investments or a retirement portfolio and want to know how long that pool of money can support withdrawals. The starting balance is carried forward month by month. The model applies the investment return assumption, subtracts the amount that must come from the portfolio, and repeats the process until the balance reaches zero or the projection reaches its maximum horizon.

This calculator goes further than a simple balance ÷ withdrawal calculation. You can increase spending for inflation, allow for investment fees, apply a simplified effective tax rate to portfolio withdrawals, and add Social Security, pension or other recurring income that starts later. Those inputs matter because the amount actually taken from the portfolio can change substantially over time.

The result should be treated as a planning scenario, not a guarantee. Real investment returns arrive unevenly, actual inflation changes, and spending rarely stays perfectly predictable. Use the lower/base/higher return comparison and test several spending levels before drawing conclusions.

The answer depends mainly on your starting savings, the monthly amount you need, investment growth on the remaining balance, and whether your withdrawals rise over time. If you withdraw less, the portfolio normally lasts longer; if spending rises or returns are lower, the runway normally shortens.

When you enter a monthly spending amount, the calculator treats it as the first-year spending requirement. If inflation adjustment is enabled, that amount increases once every 12 months. If Social Security or pension income begins later, the calculator reduces the amount that must come from the portfolio after that income starts.

For a useful check, compare the main result with the 0% return runway. That shows approximately how long the money would last without investment growth. Then review the return-sensitivity graph to see how dependent the result is on your investment assumption.

Inflation affects retirement planning because a fixed amount of money generally buys less as prices rise. If your first-year lifestyle costs $4,000 per month, keeping approximately the same purchasing power may require higher nominal spending in later years. This calculator can increase the spending amount once per year using the inflation rate you enter.

An inflation-linked withdrawal plan will usually consume more of the portfolio in later years than a fixed-dollar plan. However, investment returns may also grow the remaining assets. The result therefore depends on the relationship between return, inflation, fees and withdrawals rather than inflation alone.

Use a separate scenario with inflation turned off only when you intentionally want to model a fixed nominal payment. For retirement-lifestyle planning, leaving inflation on is usually the more informative stress test.

Social Security, pension income or another dependable recurring payment can extend the modeled life of a portfolio because it reduces how much must be withdrawn from savings. In Advanced assumptions, enter the monthly spendable amount and the number of years before it begins. The calculator then funds the remaining spending gap from the portfolio.

For example, if your planned spending is $5,000 per month and a future pension provides $2,000 per month, the portfolio would need to fund roughly the remaining $3,000 per month after the pension begins, before considering tax assumptions. If the recurring income fully covers spending in a month, the model does not force a portfolio withdrawal for that month.

If you are still accumulating money and want to know how much you need by retirement, use the planned CalcTypes Retirement Calculator. This page is designed for the later question: once you have a starting balance, how long might it support your spending?

Taxes can shorten the runway when you need to withdraw more from an account than the amount you actually want to spend. If you need $4,000 after tax, a taxable account may require a larger gross withdrawal. This calculator lets you enter a simplified effective tax rate and grosses up the portfolio withdrawal accordingly.

That input is intentionally a planning simplification. A Traditional 401(k) or Traditional IRA, a Roth account and a taxable brokerage account can be taxed differently. Your actual tax bill can also change with filing status, other income, deductions, state rules and future tax law.

Use the tax input to test sensitivity—such as 0%, 10%, 20%—rather than treating it as a tax-return calculator. For account-by-account drawdown decisions, the planned Retirement Withdrawal Strategies guide will connect the cash-flow question to withdrawal sequencing and tax considerations.

There is no single correct number because $500,000 can support very different spending levels. A person drawing $2,000 per month begins with a much lower portfolio withdrawal requirement than someone drawing $5,000 per month. Return, inflation, investment fees, taxes and future Social Security or pension income can all materially change the result.

Use $500,000 as the starting balance and enter the amount your portfolio actually needs to supply. Then compare the main projection with the 0% return runway, the 10- and 30-year balance checkpoints, and the lower/base/higher return scenarios.

The Worked Examples section includes a $500,000 scenario that you can load directly. It is a teaching example rather than a recommendation; change its spending, return and inflation inputs to match the situation you want to study.

A $1 million portfolio does not automatically translate into a fixed number of retirement years. The key question is how much of your spending must come from that portfolio. $40,000 of first-year portfolio withdrawals is a very different drawdown rate from $80,000, and the effect becomes larger over a long retirement when spending is adjusted for inflation.

Other income also matters. If Social Security or a pension begins a few years after retirement, the portfolio may carry a heavier burden early and a lighter burden later. Fees and taxes can work in the opposite direction by reducing the return retained or increasing the gross amount that must be withdrawn.

Enter $1,000,000 above and test your own spending rather than relying on a headline answer. The graph and year-by-year table are designed to show how the balance evolves, not just the date when it eventually reaches zero.

A withdrawal rate is the amount taken from a portfolio during a year divided by a reference portfolio balance, usually the initial balance when discussing a starting withdrawal rate. It is useful because it expresses spending relative to the size of the portfolio, but it should not be treated as a universal pass/fail number.

The amount a portfolio can support depends on the retirement horizon, asset mix, inflation, investment costs, taxes, market sequence and whether spending can adjust after poor market years. A shorter horizon and flexible spending can look very different from a long horizon with rigid inflation-adjusted withdrawals.

For a focused comparison of 3%, 3.5%, 4%, 4.5%, 5% and other starting rates, use the planned 4% Rule Calculator & Safe Withdrawal Rate Guide. You can then bring the resulting spending amount back to this calculator and test its runway under your own assumptions.

The 4% rule is a retirement-withdrawal framework commonly discussed as starting with a first-year withdrawal equal to 4% of the initial portfolio and then adjusting the dollar amount for inflation in later years under a particular set of assumptions. It is a rule-of-thumb framework, not the same calculation as a money-runway projection.

A money-last calculator works from the other direction. You enter the balance and the spending you want, plus return, inflation and other assumptions, and it calculates the resulting runway. That lets you test 4% spending, but also 3%, 5%, a specific dollar budget, a pension starting later, or any other scenario.

The planned CalcTypes 4% Rule Calculator will focus on withdrawal-rate comparisons. This calculator remains the place to test how a chosen spending level interacts with your full cash-flow assumptions.

Retirement saving is the accumulation phase: you are contributing money, allowing it to grow and trying to reach a target portfolio by retirement. Retirement drawdown is the spending phase: the portfolio already exists and you are taking money out to fund living expenses.

Those phases answer different questions. During accumulation you may ask, “How much do I need to retire?”, “How much should I save each month?” or “Am I on track?” During drawdown you ask, “How much can I spend?” and “How long will my existing portfolio last?”

That is why CalcTypes will keep these as connected but separate tools. Use the planned Retirement Calculator for accumulation and this calculator for drawdown. The planned Retirement Withdrawal Strategies guide will link the two stages and explain practical withdrawal approaches.

There is no single return assumption that is correct for every visitor. The appropriate planning range depends on the investments being modeled, how much risk the portfolio takes, fees, and the distinction between nominal returns and purchasing-power returns. Using an unrealistically high return can make a drawdown plan look safer than it really is.

A practical way to use this page is to enter a central assumption and then look at the built-in scenarios two percentage points lower and higher. If the plan works only under the higher-return line but fails quickly under the lower-return line, that tells you the result is highly sensitive to investment performance.

Also remember that a constant annual return is mathematically convenient but not how markets behave. Two portfolios can earn the same long-term average return and still produce different retirement outcomes if losses occur at different times. That sequence-of-returns risk is one reason the calculator labels these as deterministic scenarios rather than probabilities.

You can use the portfolio-balance and cash-flow model as an educational projection for money held in a 401(k), IRA or similar retirement account. Enter the balance available to fund withdrawals, the amount you want to spend, and a tax-rate assumption if you want to test how gross withdrawals may differ from spendable cash.

However, the calculator does not reproduce every rule that applies to every account. Traditional and Roth accounts can have different tax treatment, employer plans may have plan-specific rules, and required minimum distributions can apply in situations that this general runway model does not calculate.

For exact distribution requirements or tax liability, use the applicable official guidance and tax tools. Then enter the expected cash-flow amounts here to see how those withdrawals may affect the long-term balance.

The projection intentionally stops after 100 years. If the modeled balance has not reached zero by then, the calculator displays 100+ years. That is a technical model limit, not a statement that the money will literally last forever.

A very long result can occur when withdrawals are small relative to the balance, investment growth is high relative to withdrawals, or other income eventually covers much of the spending. In those cases, review the balance chart and assumptions rather than interpreting “100+ years” as a guarantee.