When can you actually retire?

It's a free tool that estimates the earliest age at which you can retire and live off your investment portfolio, using the standard 4% safe-withdrawal rule. Enter your current age, savings, annual contribution, expected return, and target retirement spending — the calculator tells you (a) the earliest year you'd hit a portfolio large enough to fund that spending, and (b) what your portfolio would be at age 55, 60, 65, and 70 under your current plan.

The 4% rule says you can withdraw 4% of your portfolio in year one of retirement (adjusted up for inflation each year after) without running out over a 30-year retirement, based on historical US market returns. It originated in the 1994 Trinity Study. Current research debates whether 3.5%–4% is the safer range given today's higher equity valuations and longer life expectancies — but 4% remains the standard benchmark in most retirement-planning tools. To target a more conservative withdrawal rate, multiply your annual spending by 30 (for 3.33%) or 33 (for 3%) instead of 25.

FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) calculators typically lead with Lean/Regular/Fat FIRE thresholds ($600K, $1.25M, $2.5M+) and use savings-rate-to-years framing pulled from the FIRE community. The Early Retirement Calculator uses mainstream framing — your inputs are your current numbers and target retirement age, not abstract FIRE thresholds. Same underlying math (compound growth + 4% rule), different framing. If you want to dive deeper into FIRE-specific strategies, see our /us/tools/fire-calculator.

The 7% default reflects the long-run historical real return (inflation-adjusted) of a diversified US stock-heavy portfolio over 30+ year periods. Conservative planning uses 5%; aggressive uses 8%-9%. The return assumption matters a lot over long horizons — at 5% real, a $300K portfolio with $20K/year contributions doubles in 13 years; at 7% it doubles in 10; at 9% it doubles in 8. Build in a margin of safety by stress-testing with a return rate 1-2 percentage points below your central estimate.

No — the calculator gives you the portfolio you need to fully self-fund retirement on the 4% rule. Social Security is a separate income stream that reduces your portfolio's required size. A typical Social Security check at full retirement age (67) is around $24,000/year as of 2026; if your target spending is $60,000/year, Social Security covers about 40% of that, meaning your portfolio only needs to cover $36,000/year × 25 = $900,000 (not $1.5M). Most planners model the portfolio independently because Social Security timing decisions are complex and the early retirement years (before 62 or 67) require the portfolio to carry the full load.

The 4% rule operates on the PRE-tax portfolio size — withdrawals from 401(k)/Traditional IRA are taxed as income, Roth withdrawals are tax-free, and taxable account withdrawals trigger capital gains. To approximate after-tax: increase your target spending by your expected effective tax rate in retirement (typically 12-18% for middle-income households after standard deduction). For example, $50,000 of true spending need with a 15% effective tax rate means modeling against $58,800 of gross spending.

Three levers. (1) Save more — every additional $5K/year in contributions cuts roughly 1-2 years off the timeline. (2) Reduce target spending — every $10K/year reduction in target spending cuts your required portfolio by $250K (4% rule). (3) Work longer — each additional year of work means both more contributions AND another year of compound growth on the existing balance. The third lever is the most powerful but also the one most retire-early-curious users want to avoid. Use the scenario table on this page to see the trade-offs concretely.

The calculation is mathematically exact given your inputs — it solves the compound-growth equation directly. The real-world accuracy depends entirely on whether your assumptions hold: actual returns vary year-to-year (the calculator assumes smooth average returns), expenses change with life events, and the 4% rule is a historical benchmark not a guarantee. Use this as a planning anchor, not a precise prediction. Stress-test by re-running with worse assumptions (lower returns, higher spending) to find your margin of safety.