Retirement shortfall calculator
Put in where you are now, what you are saving and the retirement you want, and see whether the two meet. If they do not, the gap is shown in pounds a month.
Risk warning. The value of investments and the income they produce can fall as well as rise. You may get back less than you invested. This calculator is an illustration only and is not a personal recommendation. It assumes a steady rate of growth, which real markets do not deliver.
This is a calculation, not a forecast and not advice. It assumes steady growth, which no real investment delivers, and it ignores charges, tax, inflation and the state pension. The pot your income needs uses a widely quoted rule of thumb of twenty five times the yearly income you want. Real returns vary and you can get back less than you put in.
How the shortfall is worked out
The maths is the compound interest calculator pointed at a date. Everything you already have, and everything you add between now and retirement, grows month by month until the day you stop. The question is whether the figure it reaches matches the life you intend to fund with it.
The target works backwards from income. A widely used rule of thumb says that to draw a yearly income sustainably, you want a pot of roughly twenty five times that income. Want forty thousand pounds a year and the rule points at a million pounds. It is a rule of thumb rather than a law, but it turns a vague ambition into a number you can aim at.
The most useful line is the last one. A shortfall thirty years out is rarely closed by heroics; it is closed by a manageable monthly amount that starts now. The same gap left for a decade needs several times the monthly saving to close, which is the whole case for looking at it early.
What this calculator ignores
Charges
Platform fees, fund charges and adviser fees all come out of the growth. A one per cent annual charge does not sound like much and takes a meaningful bite over thirty years.
Tax
Where the money sits changes the answer entirely. A pension, an ISA and a general investment account produce very different net outcomes from identical gross returns.
Inflation
The final figure is in today's pounds only if you enter a return net of inflation. Otherwise it tells you the number, not what that number will buy.
That returns are never smooth
A steady rate is a modelling convenience. Real markets deliver the same average through a sequence of good and bad years, and when the bad ones fall matters, particularly close to when you need the money.
Try the others
Compound interest
The engine underneath this page: growth earning growth over time.
Compound interest calculatorRisk reality
What happens to the plan if your income stops before the date does.
Risk reality calculatorFinancial planning
Where the money should actually sit, which is the part that changes the answer most.
How we handle planningA projection is only a starting point.
Whether the gap closes with more saving, better structuring or a different date is exactly the conversation we have.
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