About Retirement Drawdown Calculator
Saving up a big pile of money is only half the job. The other half is whether it lasts through the decades of spending that follow — while everything quietly gets more expensive each year.
This spends your savings down year by year, raising what you take out as prices rise, and tells you plainly whether the money lasts — or the age it runs dry. It also works out the most you could safely spend, and how much you'd need saved to afford the life you want.
How to use it
- Enter what you'll have saved, the age you stop working, and the age you want the money to last until. Planning to 90 or beyond is sensible.
- Enter your monthly spending, plus any pension, annuity or rental income that does not come out of the corpus.
- Read the answer, including how big a bite you're taking in the first year, and what to change if the money doesn't last.
Frequently asked questions
- Why do withdrawals rise every year?
- Because your costs do. Holding withdrawals flat in rupee terms would model a steadily shrinking lifestyle and badly overstate how long the money lasts.
- How much can I safely take out each year?
- About 4% of your savings a year is the usual rule of thumb for a 30-year retirement. Less than that is comfortable; more than 5% is risky, especially if the first few years go badly. The real test is whether your savings grow faster than you spend them, which this tool shows you directly.
- Why does a bad first decade matter more than a bad last one?
- This is sequence-of-returns risk. Losses early on shrink the capital that all later growth compounds from, while you are also withdrawing from it. The same returns in a different order can produce very different outcomes, so leave margin beyond what a steady-return projection shows.