Retirement Budget Planner

This planner projects monthly retirement income from three sources — Social Security, a pension, and portfolio withdrawals calculated using the well-known 4% rule (withdrawing 4% of your total portfolio balance annually, spread evenly across twelve months) — and compares that total against a target budget set at 75% of your pre-retirement income, reflecting the common guideline that retirees typically need 70-80% of their working income to maintain their lifestyle. The target budget is then broken into categories using fixed percentages: 30% housing, 15% healthcare (or your actual entered premium if it's higher), 15% food, 10% transportation, with whatever remains going to discretionary spending. The monthly surplus or deficit simply compares your projected income against this target.

Portfolio longevity is the calculator's most important caveat: it estimates how many years your portfolio would last if you drew down only what's needed after Social Security and pension are subtracted from your target budget, dividing your portfolio balance by that annual gap. This is a simplified snapshot, not a full retirement projection — it doesn't account for investment returns during retirement, inflation, sequence-of-returns risk, or required minimum distributions, and the result is capped at 50 years for display. Use it to sanity-check your withdrawal rate, not as a substitute for a full retirement-income plan.