401(k) & Roth projection
Add your age and income on the Dashboard to see your 401(k) & Roth projection here.
Save around 15% of your income across your working years - that's the widely cited guideline, anyway. Where you actually land depends heavily on when you started and when you'd like to stop working, so treat it as a starting point rather than a rule. This calculator turns your goal into a recurring monthly contribution and weighs it against your income and any existing debt, so you can see how much room it leaves in today's budget, not just on paper.
These key factors affect retirement affordability
Income and expenses
A savings goal only works if it survives contact with your current bills and debt. We weigh the monthly amount you enter against your whole financial picture, not your income in isolation, because a contribution that looks fine on a spreadsheet can still wreck your month if rent and a car payment already eat most of your paycheck.
Employer match
If your employer matches a percentage of what you put in, capture the full match before you optimize anything else. People call it free money for a reason - turning it down is effectively a pay cut you're choosing.
Savings rate guideline
The 15% figure from the intro above is a career-average target, not a number you need to hit every single month. Someone who started saving at 22 has more slack than someone starting at 40, so back into a number that fits your actual timeline rather than chasing 15% mechanically from day one.
Time horizon and compounding
Time in the market does a lot of the heavy lifting here. A smaller amount started in your late twenties can genuinely outgrow a larger amount started in your forties, purely because compounding gets more years to work.
Account types
A 401(k), a traditional IRA, and a Roth IRA are taxed differently and cap your contributions at different limits, and which combination makes sense depends on your current tax bracket versus where you expect to land in retirement. Worth sorting out before you lock in a monthly number, since the right account can matter almost as much as the amount.
How to use your results
Try a few different monthly contribution amounts:
- The amount needed to capture your full employer match, if you have one.
- A higher amount to see how much room it would actually leave.
- Alongside your existing debt, for a realistic sense of what's sustainable long-term.
Ways to increase how much you can save
- Capture the full employer match first - it's the highest-return move available to most savers.
- Automate contributions so they happen before you have a chance to spend that money elsewhere.
- Increase your contribution percentage with each raise, before your budget adjusts to the new income.
- Pay down high-interest debt to free up more room for savings.
- Take advantage of catch-up contributions once you're eligible.
More career & life changes calculators
Sources
Bureau of Labor Statistics (median income by age, shown in the sidebar), Experian (credit score by age, shown in the sidebar) - starting points to compare against, not real-time quotes.
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