When can I retire?
Enter your age, savings, income and Social Security. This tool simulates your money year by year — building it up while you work, then drawing it down — and tells you honestly whether you're on track, and how soon you could go. No sign-up, no gated number.
ASSUMPTIONS7% → 5% · 3% infl · to 95
So — when can you retire?
You can claim Social Security as early as 62, reach full retirement age at 67, and start Medicare at 65. But the age you're allowed to retire and the age you can afford to are different questions. The one that matters is whether your savings, plus Social Security, can replace enough of your income to cover your spending for the rest of your life.
The conventional benchmark is to replace 70–80% of your pre-retirement income and to have saved roughly 10× your salary by your mid-60s. Whether you're there depends on four things: how much you've saved, how much you save each year, what you'll spend, and how long retirement lasts. The calculator above puts your own numbers through a year-by-year simulation — building your balance while you work, then drawing it down (with Social Security helping) until age 95 — and tells you, plainly, whether the money lasts and what it takes to close any gap.
The rest of this page explains each piece — how much you need, whether it lasts, how Social Security factors in, and what return to assume — so the number above means something.
How much do I need to retire?
Start from spending, not from a magic net-worth number. Estimate what a year of retired life costs in today's dollars — often 70–80% of your working income, because work-related costs and retirement saving itself fall away. That's your income-replacement figure.
A common rule of thumb turns that into a target: the 4% rule says a portfolio can sustainably fund about 4% of itself per year, so you'd need roughly 25× your annual spending invested — but only for the part Social Security and any pension don't cover. If you'll spend $70,000 a year and Social Security covers $28,000, your portfolio only has to fund the remaining $42,000 — about $1.05M, not $1.75M.
This tool doesn't stop at a rule of thumb. It simulates the real path: contributions compounding before retirement, then withdrawals net of Social Security each year, at a return that steps down as your portfolio de-risks. The “what you'll need” figure in the result is the balance that lasts exactly to your planning age — no more, no less.
Will my money last?
This is the question that actually keeps people up at night, and it's the one a single target number can't answer. Two retirees with the same nest egg can have very different outcomes depending on spending, Social Security timing, and how markets behave early in retirement.
The chart above shows the full arc: your balance climbing while you save, peaking the year you retire, then drawing down as you live on it. If the line reaches your planning age (95 by default) still above zero, the money lasts. If it touches zero first, you'll see exactly which age it runs dry — and the result panel tells you how much more to save each year to push that point past the finish line.
Planning to 95 is deliberate. A 65-year-old today has a real chance of living into their 90s, and the expensive mistake is planning too short. If you're confident in a shorter horizon, lower the planning age in the assumptions and watch the requirement fall.
What return should I assume?
Over 30+ years, the return you assume swings the answer more than anything else — so this tool is explicit about it, and lets you change every figure. The defaults are deliberately conventional:
- 7% nominal return before retirement — the long-run U.S. stock-market average, before inflation.
- 5% nominal return in retirement — stepped down, as portfolios add bonds and de-risk near the end.
- 3% inflation — so every figure stays in today's dollars.
- Age 95 planning horizon — plan long; outliving the money is the costly error.
- 4% safe withdrawal rate — the Trinity Study baseline, shown for reference. The engine simulates year by year rather than assuming a flat draw.
- Social Security is haircut to 70% of your stated benefit, reflecting the projected ~2033 trust-fund shortfall — the same conservative default as the FIRE Projection app and the Barista FIRE calculator. Dial it to 100% to assume benefits are paid in full.
- All figures are pre-tax and in today's dollars. Every assumption above is a slider you can move.
Full method, sources, and edge cases: FIRE Projection methodology →
Educational, not financial advice. Markets don't deliver a steady 7%, sequence-of-returns risk is real, and taxes depend on your accounts and state. Use this to build intuition and frame the question — not as a plan to act on without advice tailored to your situation.
Can I retire earlier?
The calculator above answers “am I on track for 65?” using the conventional rule — replacing a slice of your paycheck. The FIRE question is different: not when am I allowed to retire, but how soon could I? It starts from what you actually live on — your spending, not your gross — and pulls on the one lever that moves it most: your savings rate.
Drag it. Everything else stays exactly as you set it in the calculator above — only the share of income you save changes. Watch the age move.
Savings rate vs. the earliest age
| Savings rate | Earliest retirement age | Years from now |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | age 74 | 34 |
| 15%you | age 70 | 30 |
| 20% | age 67 | 27 |
| 30% | age 62 | 22 |
| 40% | age 58 | 18 |
| 50% | age 54 | 14 |
Holding income fixed and moving the split between saving and spending. A higher savings rate does two things at once: it grows the balance faster and lowers the target (you live on — and need to fund — less). That double effect is why the age drops so fast.
Model the real version of this.
This page runs the textbook math. The app runs your situation: a proper Social Security tool that values the benefit as a stream and stress-tests a future benefit cut, a windfall & inheritance lever, and a live baseline-vs-scenario compare so you can watch a decision move your date.
- Social Security, valued properly — net present value, with a benefit-cut haircut.
- Windfalls & inheritance — drop a lump sum in and see the date shift.
- Baseline vs. scenario — compare two plans side by side, live.
THE APP STORE
How Social Security factors in
Social Security is the floor under almost every American retirement, and it changes the math more than any other single input. Because it's an inflation-adjusted stream for life, every dollar it pays is a dollar your portfolio doesn't have to fund — which is why turning it on in the calculator can move you from “runs dry at 88” to “lasts to 95” without saving another cent.
When you claim matters. You can start as early as 62 at a permanent reduction, or wait until 70 for a permanently larger check — benefits grow roughly 8% for each year you delay past full retirement age (67 for most people today). The calculator defaults to claiming at 67; try 62 and 70 to see the trade-off in your own numbers. Toggle Social Security off entirely to see the portfolio-only picture — a useful worst-case if you want to treat the benefit as a bonus rather than a plan. Get your real estimate from ssa.gov.