How Long Will $500K or $1 Million Last in Retirement?

How long your money lasts depends on five things: how much you start with, how much you withdraw each year, what your investments earn, how fast inflation raises your costs, and how much of your spending is covered by income that is not coming from your portfolio. As a rough anchor, a portfolio supporting a withdrawal of about 4% of its starting value, rising with inflation each year, has historically lasted around 30 years. Withdraw 8% instead and the same money may be gone in about 14 years. The calculator below turns your own numbers into a year count.

Retirement Calculator

How Long Will My Money Last in Retirement?

Your savings last until the money you take out, plus the effect of rising prices, outruns whatever your investments earn.

That is the entire concept. Everything else is detail.

Picture a bathtub. Your portfolio balance is the water level. Investment returns are the tap adding water. Withdrawals are the drain pulling it out. Inflation slowly widens the drain every year, because the same lifestyle costs more each year. If the tap runs faster than the drain, the level rises and the money outlives you. If the drain wins, there is a date when the tub empties.

A "how long will my money last" calculator is just a fast way to find that date.

Two things make it harder than it sounds. Nobody knows what their investments will earn, and nobody knows how long they will live. Both are guesses. The calculator does not remove those guesses, it just shows you what happens under the guesses you choose.

How the How Long Will My Money Last Calculator Works

The calculator runs a simple loop, one year at a time:

1. Start with your portfolio balance.
2. Subtract your withdrawal for the year.
3. Grow whatever is left by your expected rate of return.
4. Increase next year's withdrawal by your inflation rate.
5. Repeat until the balance hits zero.

The output is the number of years until depletion.

Worked example: $500,000 starting balance, $30,000 withdrawn in year one, 5% return, 3% inflation.

Year	Starting balance	Withdrawal	After withdrawal	Growth at 5%	Ending balance
1	$500,000	$30,000	$470,000	$23,500	$493,500
2	$493,500	$30,900	$462,600	$23,130	$485,730
3	$485,730	$31,827	$453,903	$22,695	$476,598
4	$476,598	$32,782	$443,816	$22,191	$466,007
5	$466,007	$33,765	$432,242	$21,612	$453,854

Notice something. The balance is falling even though returns are positive and the withdrawal is only 6% of the original balance. That is the widening drain. By year 20 the withdrawal has grown to roughly $52,700 while the balance has shrunk, so the drain accelerates. In this scenario the money runs out in about 19.9 years.

That acceleration at the end is why calculator results feel fine for a long stretch and then collapse quickly.

How to Use the Retirement Calculator

Enter your best honest estimates, not your most optimistic ones.

Calculator input	What it means	Why it matters
Current savings	Total investable retirement assets: 401(k), IRA, Roth, brokerage, cash	This is the starting balance. Home equity does not belong here unless you plan to sell
Current age	Where you are now	Sets how many years of growth remain before withdrawals begin
Retirement age	When withdrawals start	Every year you delay adds a saving year and removes a spending year, so it moves the answer twice
Annual (or monthly) spending	What your life actually costs	The single most sensitive input in the whole model
Other income	Social Security, pension, annuity, rental income, part-time work	Only the gap between spending and this income comes out of your portfolio
Expected rate of return	Assumed annual investment growth	Small changes here swing the answer by years
Inflation rate	How fast your costs rise	Compounds against you for the entire retirement
Taxes	Effective rate on withdrawals	Traditional 401(k) and IRA withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income, so gross withdrawals must exceed net spending
Life expectancy / planning horizon	How many years the money must cover	Turns a raw year count into a pass or fail

The most common mistake: entering total spending as the withdrawal amount while forgetting Social Security. That understates how long the money lasts, sometimes badly. The correct entry for the withdrawal field is spending minus guaranteed income.

The second most common mistake: entering net spending while forgetting taxes. If you need $50,000 in your pocket and your effective rate on withdrawals is 15%, you have to pull roughly $58,800 from a traditional IRA to get there.

What Can Make Your Retirement Money Last Longer or Run Out Faster?

Factor	Direction	Why
Higher withdrawal rate	Shortens	Doubling the withdrawal more than halves the years, because compounding has less to work with
Lower withdrawal rate	Extends	The single most controllable variable you have
Higher investment returns	Extends	But cannot be chosen, only assumed
Lower or negative returns	Shortens	Especially damaging in the first few years
High inflation	Shortens	Silently raises the withdrawal every single year
Retiring later	Extends strongly	More saving years, fewer spending years, higher Social Security
Social Security and pensions	Extends	Every dollar of guaranteed income is a dollar the portfolio does not pay
Delaying Social Security	Extends	Benefits grow roughly 8% for each year of delay past full retirement age, up to 70
Healthcare costs	Shortens	Fidelity's 2026 estimate puts average lifetime out-of-pocket healthcare at $185,500 for a single 65-year-old, up 7.5% from the prior year
Long-term care	Shortens sharply	Fidelity's figure excludes long-term care entirely
Market crash early in retirement	Shortens sharply	Sequence-of-returns risk, explained below
Spending flexibility	Extends	Cutting back in bad years is worth more than most people expect
Taxes and RMDs	Varies	Forced withdrawals can create tax drag you did not plan for

How Long Will Different Amounts of Money Last in Retirement?

Assumptions for every figure in this section: withdrawal taken at the start of each year, increased by 3% annually for inflation, portfolio earning a steady 5% nominal return, no taxes, no Social Security, no fees. Real markets do not deliver steady returns, so treat these as illustrations of the math, not forecasts.

Same $40,000 annual withdrawal, different starting balances:

Starting savings	Year 1 withdrawal	Return	Inflation	Estimated years until depletion
$250,000	$40,000	5%	3%	About 6.6 years
$500,000	$40,000	5%	3%	About 14.1 years
$750,000	$40,000	5%	3%	About 23.0 years
$1,000,000	$40,000	5%	3%	About 33.6 years

Doubling the savings from $250,000 to $500,000 does not double the years, it more than doubles them. Compounding rewards the larger balance more.

Same withdrawal rate, any starting balance: because the math is proportional, the percentage you withdraw is what really sets the year count.

Starting withdrawal rate	On $500,000	On $1,000,000	Estimated years
4%	$20,000	$40,000	About 33.6 years
5%	$25,000	$50,000	About 24.9 years
6%	$30,000	$60,000	About 19.9 years
7%	$35,000	$70,000	About 16.5 years
8%	$40,000	$80,000	About 14.1 years

This is the most useful table on this page. Under a 5% return and 3% inflation, a 4% starting withdrawal lasts roughly three decades and an 8% withdrawal lasts less than half that. The size of the portfolio does not change the year count. Only the rate does.

How Long Will $500,000 Last in Retirement?

Under the assumptions above, $500,000 supports about 20 years at $30,000 a year, about 25 years at $25,000 a year, and about 14 years at $40,000 a year.

Now make it realistic by adding Social Security. The SSA estimates the average retired worker benefit at $2,071 a month after the 2.8% COLA that took effect in January 2026, or about $24,852 a year.

If your household spends $70,000 a year:

Scenario	Annual portfolio withdrawal	Estimated years $500,000 lasts
Ignoring Social Security	$70,000	About 7.6 years
Counting average Social Security	$45,148	About 12.3 years

Same portfolio, same spending, and the answer changes by nearly five years purely because of how you filled in the form. This is why the "other income" field is not optional.

How Long Will $1 Million Last in Retirement?

Under the same assumptions, $1 million supports about 34 years at $40,000 a year, about 25 years at $50,000, and about 20 years at $60,000.

For context, households headed by someone 65 or older spent an average of $61,432 in 2024 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At that spending level, and with no other income at all, $1 million is roughly a 20-year portfolio. Add average Social Security and the same million stretches considerably further.

And for the $2 million question: at $80,000 a year it lasts about 34 years, at $100,000 about 25 years, and at $120,000 about 20 years. The pattern repeats because the withdrawal rate is what matters.

How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?

There is no universal number, because the number is a function of your spending, not of averages.

The fastest way to get a starting figure is to work backwards from the withdrawal rate:

Target portfolio = (annual spending minus guaranteed income) ÷ withdrawal rate

If you spend $70,000 a year and expect $25,000 from Social Security, your portfolio needs to cover $45,000. At a 4% starting rate that implies roughly $1,125,000. At a more conservative 3.9% it implies about $1,154,000. At 5% it implies $900,000.

That single formula explains why the "how much do I need to retire" answer swings by hundreds of thousands of dollars between sources. They are quietly using different withdrawal rates.

Things that move your number:

• Spending level. The largest driver by far, and the one you control.
• Retirement age. Retiring at 62 instead of 67 means five more years of withdrawals, five fewer years of saving, and a permanently smaller Social Security check. Claiming at 62 can cut a worker's benefit by roughly 30% when full retirement age is 67.
• Longevity. The SSA's 2026 Trustees Report projects remaining life expectancy at 65 of about 18.4 years for men and 20.9 years for women. Those are averages. Roughly half of people live longer, so planning to the average is planning to run out half the time.
• Healthcare. Especially if you retire before Medicare eligibility at 65.
• Taxes. A dollar in a Roth is worth more than a dollar in a traditional IRA.
• Housing. A paid-off mortgage changes the entire calculation.

For scale, Vanguard's How America Saves 2026 reported an average 401(k) balance of $167,970 and a median of $44,115 at year-end 2025. Most people are working with a lot less than the headline retirement numbers assume, which makes guaranteed income and spending flexibility more important, not less.

What Is a Safe Retirement Withdrawal Rate?

A safe withdrawal rate is the percentage of your starting portfolio you can withdraw in year one, then adjust for inflation each year afterward, with a high probability of not running out over your planning horizon.

The famous answer is 4%, from William Bengen's 1994 research based on historical U.S. market returns. It is a useful reference point and a poor plan.

Where the credible sources actually stand today:

Source	Rate	Basis
Bengen, revised	4.7% as a worst-case safe maximum	Historical returns, updated asset mix
Morningstar, 2026 base case	3.9% for a 30-year retirement	Forward-looking return assumptions, portfolios holding 30% to 50% equities
Morningstar, flexible spending	Up to about 5.7% for retirees who adjust spending with market conditions	Dynamic guardrails approach

Two respected sources land on 3.9% and 4.7% for the same question. That is not a contradiction to resolve, it is the honest range. Morningstar's 3.9% assumes a 90% probability of having money left after 30 years, using forward-looking return and inflation forecasts rather than historical averages, which is why it comes out lower.

Three things worth knowing about any of these numbers:

1. They are starting rates. Morningstar's own guidance is that retirees should not re-adjust their spending each year to match the latest published safe rate; the figure is meant as guidance for people just entering retirement.
2. They exclude Social Security and other outside income.
3. They assume a 30-year horizon. A 55-year-old retiree needs a lower rate. An 80-year-old can support a higher one.

Use a withdrawal rate as a sanity check on your calculator result, not as a substitute for it.

Why Inflation Matters in Retirement

Inflation is the reason a fixed withdrawal is not really fixed.

If you need $60,000 a year today and prices rise 3% annually, you need:

Years from now	Equivalent spending needed
10	$80,635
20	$108,367
30	$145,636

The lifestyle never improved. The price tag simply grew. Put differently, at 3% inflation a dollar buys about 55 cents of what it buys today after 20 years.

U.S. consumer prices rose 3.4% over the 12 months ending July 2026, so a 3% planning assumption is not conservative padding. Social Security does adjust: the 2026 COLA was 2.8%, and cost-of-living adjustments have averaged about 3.1% over the past decade. Your portfolio withdrawals have no such automatic mechanism.

Healthcare deserves its own note, because it does not track general inflation. One 2026 industry projection put long-term healthcare inflation near 5.8% a year against a projected long-run Social Security COLA of about 2.4%. If a growing share of your budget is medical, a single blended inflation rate understates your true cost growth.

Why Investment Returns Matter (And Why the Calculator Lies About Them)

Every basic calculator applies the same return every year. Markets have never done that.

A 7% assumption does not mean 7%, 7%, 7%. It means something closer to +22%, minus 9%, +14%, +3%, minus 18%, +31%. The average may land near 7%. The path does not.

This matters for one specific reason. When you are contributing and not withdrawing, order does not affect the result. When you are withdrawing, order affects everything. That is the next section.

Two practical points on the return input:

• Enter a return that matches your actual allocation. A portfolio holding 40% stocks and 60% bonds should not be modeled at 9%.
• Consider running the calculator twice, once at your expected return and once two or three percentage points lower, to see how much the plan depends on things going well.

What Is Sequence-of-Returns Risk?

Sequence-of-returns risk is the danger that poor market returns arrive early in retirement, while your balance is at its largest and you are selling assets to fund withdrawals.

Here is the demonstration. Two retirees each start with $1,000,000, each withdraw $50,000 in year one rising 3% a year, and each experience the exact same ten annual returns. The only difference is the order.

The ten returns: minus 15%, minus 10%, +5%, +12%, +18%, +8%, +14%, +6%, +20%, +12%. The arithmetic average is 7% for both.

Retiree	Return order	Balance after 10 years
A	Bad years first	About $839,430
B	Good years first	About $1,205,334
Either, if no withdrawals were taken	Order is irrelevant	About $1,862,021

A gap of roughly $366,000 opened up between two people with identical returns and identical spending. And the third row is the proof: with no withdrawals, order genuinely does not matter. Withdrawals are what convert a temporary decline into a permanent loss, because shares sold at depressed prices never participate in the recovery.

This is the single biggest thing a simple calculator cannot show you, and the main reason people who can be flexible in the first few years of retirement tend to do much better than the model predicts.

Where Social Security Fits In

Include it, but include it carefully.

Social Security functions as an inflation-adjusted lifetime income floor, which is exactly the kind of income a portfolio struggles to replicate. Every dollar it covers is a dollar your investments do not have to produce.

Key 2026 figures:

• The 2026 COLA is 2.8%, based on CPI-W growth from the third quarter of 2024 to the third quarter of 2025.
• The estimated average monthly benefit for all retired workers is $2,071.
• The maximum benefit for a worker retiring at full retirement age is $4,152 a month.
• Full retirement age is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later, and 66 years and 10 months for those born in 1959.

The claiming decision is one of the most powerful levers available. Morningstar's research concluded that delaying Social Security is a sound decision for retirees trying to maximize lifetime income, and that dynamic withdrawal strategies work better when paired with a substantial, predictable income floor.

Practical approach: use your actual estimated benefit from your my Social Security account, not an average. Enter the age you plan to claim, not the age you plan to retire, because those can differ. If you retire at 63 and claim at 70, your portfolio carries the entire load for seven years and then the load drops sharply. A basic calculator with one flat "other income" field cannot model that bridge period, and that period is often where plans break.

Taxes and Required Minimum Distributions

Most calculators ignore taxes. Your withdrawals will not.

• Traditional 401(k) and IRA withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income.
• Roth withdrawals are generally tax-free in retirement, so a Roth dollar funds more spending than a traditional dollar.
• Taxable brokerage accounts generate capital gains and dividend taxes along the way.

Then there are required minimum distributions, which force withdrawals whether you want the money or not. Under SECURE 2.0, the RMD age is 73 for individuals who turned 72 after December 31, 2022 and reach 73 before January 1, 2033, and 75 for those who turn 73 after December 31, 2032. The first RMD is due by April 1 of the year after you reach RMD age, with later ones due December 31, and delaying that first one means taking two distributions in the same calendar year. Missed amounts can face a 25% excise tax, reduced to 10% if corrected within two years.

Why this matters for the calculator: an RMD can exceed what you actually need, pushing you into a higher bracket, increasing the taxable share of your Social Security, and triggering Medicare premium surcharges. If your projection is tight, model your withdrawals gross of tax.

How to Make Your Retirement Savings Last Longer

Ranked roughly by impact:

1. Lower the withdrawal rate. Going from 6% to 5% of a $600,000 portfolio is $6,000 a year of spending, and roughly five extra years of portfolio life under the assumptions used earlier.
2. Work longer, even part-time. Take the earlier example: someone with $500,000 who works three more years while saving $20,000 annually at 5% reaches about $641,862. At an inflation-adjusted $40,000 withdrawal, that stretches the portfolio from about 14.1 years to about 17.1 years. Three years of work bought roughly three extra years of funding and three years of not withdrawing.
3. Delay Social Security if you can afford the bridge. An 8%-per-year increase in inflation-protected lifetime income is not available anywhere else.
4. Build in spending flexibility. Morningstar's research indicates retirees willing to adjust spending with market conditions may support withdrawals as high as 5.7% compared with 3.9% for rigid inflation-adjusted spending. The willingness to skip an inflation raise after a bad year is worth a great deal.
5. Keep one to three years of spending in cash or short-term bonds. This is the practical defense against sequence risk: it lets you avoid selling stocks into a decline.
6. Diversify the portfolio to match the horizon. Morningstar noted that heavily equity-weighted portfolios generally do not support the highest starting safe withdrawal rates, because their volatility increases sequence-of-returns risk, while higher bond yields provide a more stable income stream.
7. Plan for healthcare separately. HSAs, Medicare supplement coverage, and a specific reserve for the years before 65.
8. Manage taxes deliberately. Roth conversions in low-income years, withdrawal sequencing across account types, and qualified charitable distributions after 70½.
9. Consider a guaranteed income floor. An income annuity converts a portion of the portfolio into lifetime income and removes longevity risk on that slice. It is not right for everyone and it is irreversible.
10. Re-run the numbers annually. A plan built in 2026 with 2026 assumptions is not a plan for 2036.

This is general education, not a recommendation for your situation.

How Accurate Are Retirement Calculators?

They are accurate arithmetic applied to uncertain inputs. The math is exact. The forecast is not.

Limitation	What it means for your result
Fixed return assumption	Real returns vary year to year, and the variation itself shortens portfolio life during withdrawals
No sequence modeling	A basic calculator cannot show what an early crash does
Single inflation rate	Healthcare, housing, and food inflate at different speeds
Flat spending curve	Real retirement spending often starts high, dips in the middle, then rises again with medical costs
Taxes usually excluded	Overstates how much spending your withdrawals actually fund
Fixed lifespan	You do not know yours
No unplanned expenses	Roof replacement, car, long-term care, helping family
Fees usually excluded	A 1% advisory fee plus 0.5% fund costs comes straight off your return assumption

Monte Carlo calculators, which run thousands of randomized market paths and report a success probability, address the return-variability problem better than fixed-rate tools. They still cannot predict inflation, longevity, or your actual spending.

Use the result as a direction indicator, not a promise.

How to Interpret Your Calculator Results

Result	What it likely means	What to do next
Money lasts well past age 95	Plan has real margin, or your assumptions are optimistic	Re-run with a return two points lower. If it still holds, you may be able to spend more or retire sooner
Money runs out in your 80s	Common and fixable	Test a lower withdrawal, a later retirement date, and delayed Social Security. Small changes compound
Money runs out before age 75	Serious gap	Focus on guaranteed income and spending reduction rather than a higher return assumption
Result swings by 10+ years when you change return by 1%	The plan depends heavily on markets cooperating	Reduce sequence risk with a cash reserve and build in spending flexibility
Result barely moves when you change inputs	Guaranteed income is doing most of the work	You are in a strong position

One rule for reading any of these: if a small change to an assumption produces a large change in the answer, the plan is fragile. Fragility is a bigger problem than a short year count, because a short count can be fixed with known adjustments while fragility means you are betting on a forecast.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long will my retirement savings last?

It depends on your withdrawal rate more than your balance. Withdrawing 4% of your starting portfolio and adjusting for inflation has historically supported around 30 years. At 6% the same portfolio lasts roughly 20 years, and at 8% about 14 years, assuming a 5% return and 3% inflation.

How much money do I need to retire?

Divide your annual spending, minus Social Security and any pension, by your chosen withdrawal rate. Spending $70,000 with $25,000 of Social Security means covering $45,000, which implies roughly $1.1 million at a 4% rate.

How long will $500,000 last in retirement?

Roughly 14 years at $40,000 a year, 20 years at $30,000, and 25 years at $25,000, using a 5% return and 3% inflation with no other income. Adding average Social Security typically extends every one of those figures by several years.

How long will $1 million last in retirement?

About 34 years at $40,000 a year, 25 years at $50,000, and 20 years at $60,000 under the same assumptions. At the average spending level for households aged 65 and over, $1 million alone is closer to a 20-year portfolio.

How long will $2 million last in retirement?

About 34 years at $80,000 a year, 25 years at $100,000, and 20 years at $120,000. The percentages are the same as for $1 million because the math scales.

What is a safe withdrawal rate in retirement?

There is a credible range rather than a single number. Morningstar's base case for new retirees in 2026 is 3.9% for a 30-year retirement, while Bengen has revised his own estimate to 4.7% as a worst-case maximum. Flexible spenders may support more.

Does inflation really change how long my savings last?

Yes, substantially. In the $500,000 example above, moving inflation from 2% to 4% while holding everything else constant cuts the portfolio's life from about 22.3 years to about 18.1 years.

Can my retirement savings actually run out?

Yes. Any withdrawal rate above what the portfolio sustainably earns after inflation eventually depletes it. This is why guaranteed lifetime income sources matter so much.

Should I include Social Security in a retirement calculator?

Yes. Enter only the gap between your spending and your guaranteed income as the withdrawal amount. Leaving Social Security out is the most common reason people see alarming results that are not realistic.

What happens if the stock market crashes right after I retire?

This is sequence-of-returns risk, and it is the most damaging timing in retirement. Two retirees with identical average returns can end up hundreds of thousands of dollars apart based only on which years were bad. Holding one to three years of spending in cash and pausing inflation raises after a down year are the standard defenses.

Is a Fidelity or Bankrate calculator more accurate than others?

They use the same underlying arithmetic. Differences in results come from different default assumptions for return, inflation, taxes, and whether the tool runs a fixed projection or a Monte Carlo simulation. Compare the assumptions, not the brands.

Do required minimum distributions affect how long my money lasts?

Indirectly. RMDs begin at 73 for most current retirees and 75 for those turning 73 after 2032. They do not increase your spending, but the tax on forced withdrawals can, which reduces what your portfolio actually funds.

How much can I withdraw each year without running out?

As a starting point, take your portfolio and multiply by 3.9% to 4.7%, then adjust based on your age, allocation, and how flexible your spending can be. Re-check it every year.