Retirement Income Calculator

Annual Withdrawal is calculated as a flat percentage of your current Retirement Savings balance — Savings x Withdrawal Rate — with no reference to how that balance is expected to grow or shrink afterward. Expected Annual Return instead feeds into the balance-over-time projection chart, which shows whether that fixed withdrawal amount is likely to be sustainable given how the portfolio is expected to perform, not whether the withdrawal itself changes.

The 4% rule is a widely cited retirement-planning guideline suggesting that withdrawing 4% of a retirement portfolio's starting value each year (adjusted for inflation in the original research) has historically had a strong track record of lasting roughly 30 years without depleting a diversified stock-and-bond portfolio. It's a rule-of-thumb starting point for planning, not a guarantee — actual portfolio survival depends on market sequence, inflation, and the exact time horizon involved.

Yes — Annual Withdrawal and Monthly Withdrawal are both a direct percentage of Retirement Savings, so doubling your savings balance exactly doubles both withdrawal figures, holding the withdrawal rate fixed. This is a linear relationship with no diminishing effect at higher balances.

This calculator's Annual Withdrawal and Monthly Withdrawal figures are fixed percentages of your STARTING savings balance, not a percentage recalculated against the current balance each year — so the dollar withdrawal amount shown doesn't automatically adjust downward after a market decline. The balance-over-time chart will still show the effect of that fixed withdrawal against a lower expected return, which is where a sequence-of-returns risk would actually show up in a real retirement plan.