Purposeful FIRE⏳Retirement Savings Longevity Calculator
Find out how long your retirement savings will last. Enter your balance, planned monthly spending, expected return, and inflation rate to see your runway.
Your Numbers
Your Results
What Is Retirement Savings Longevity?
Most retirement planning focuses on accumulation: how much do you need to save? This calculator flips to the question most retirees actually spend more time worrying about: given what I have, how long will it last? The longevity question is the de-accumulation counterpart to the FIRE Number, and it's frequently more anxiety-provoking because the variables are less controllable once you've already retired.
The inputs that matter most are the ones people find it hardest to be accurate about: how much you'll actually spend (inflation adjusts the withdrawal upward each year), and what return you'll earn on what's left. Small differences in either assumption compound dramatically over a 30-40 year retirement, which is why the chart view is more informative than any single number.
How This Calculator Works
The calculator simulates your portfolio month by month: each month, the remaining balance earns a pro-rated share of the annual return, then the month's withdrawal is subtracted. The withdrawal amount increases slightly each month in line with your stated inflation rate. This continues until the balance hits zero (depleted) or until 60 years have elapsed without depletion (effectively sustainable).
Personal Considerations
Longevity risk, the risk of outliving your money, is consistently rated as one of the top fears among retirees, often ranking above the fear of death in surveys. This asymmetry is worth understanding: running out of money is recoverable in theory (you can return to work, downsize, rely on family) but feels catastrophic in a way that makes people more risk-averse with their portfolios than their actual numbers warrant, sometimes to the point of not spending money they genuinely have and can afford to spend.
The most important use of this calculator isn't to get a single answer but to run a range of scenarios, particularly changing the return assumption from optimistic (7%) to conservative (5%) and seeing how the depletion date shifts. For most people, the gap is 10-15 years, which makes the return assumption far more important than the precise withdrawal amount.
If what you're feeling goes beyond what a calculator can help with, licensed clinicians are available at SanaNetwork.com, a referral network founded by this site's founder, Dr. Yoendry Torres.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. It uses a fixed average return, which means it does not capture the specific danger of a major market downturn in the early years of retirement. Sequence-of-returns risk is the reason the 4% rule and similar rules of thumb exist: they were calibrated against historical worst-case sequences, not average outcomes. Our Safe Withdrawal Rate Calculator addresses this more directly.
Use investable assets, the portion that's actually deployed and generating returns. Home equity, for example, isn't generating a return unless you plan to liquidate it, and pension income or Social Security that you don't have to draw from the portfolio effectively lengthens your runway (you can model this by reducing your monthly withdrawal by the amount of that guaranteed income).
A common planning assumption for a balanced stock/bond portfolio is 5-7% annually. For a more conservative portfolio, 4-5% is reasonable. The safest approach is to run the calculator at two or three return assumptions and treat the lower result as your more reliable planning number.
It means your withdrawal rate is low enough relative to your expected return that your portfolio grows faster than you're drawing it down. This is a good position to be in, but don't mistake it for certainty. The key variables (return, inflation, spending) all carry real uncertainty over a 30-40 year horizon.