Retirement withdrawal calculator: project how long savings last given balance, withdrawal rate, returns and inflation. Free, private, runs in your browser.
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$800k at 4%: first-year income
What this means for your numbers: The 0.75-point gap between 4% and 3.25% on $800,000 is $6,000/year of spending: the price of a more survivable plan. Every $100k of portfolio adds $4,000/year at the standard rate.
Illustrative breakdown using the worked example above. The calculator computes your own numbers with the same formula.
A worked example: $500,000 at 4%
Enter 500000 as the portfolio and 4 as the rate. The calculator multiplies 500000 by 4, then divides by 100, which gives 20000 per year. Dividing 20000 by 12 gives the monthly figure of 1666.67. Those two numbers, 20000 and 1666.67, are what appear in the result panel, and you can check them by hand in under a minute.
The same portfolio at a 3.5% rate yields 17500 per year, or 1458.33 per month, a difference of 208.34 every month. At 5% it yields 25000 per year and 2083.33 per month. Because the math is a straight percentage, every 0.5% you move the rate shifts annual income by 2500 on this portfolio size. That linearity is the whole mechanism: the tool never models sequence of returns, taxes, or inflation; it converts a rate into a flat spending allowance.
Where a fixed rate breaks down
A flat 4% withdrawal ignores inflation. If prices rise 2.5% per year, the goods that cost 1666.67 in month one cost about 2110 by year ten and 2685 by year twenty, while the withdrawal stays fixed at 1666.67. Retirees who inflate their withdrawals instead typically start nearer 3.3% to 3.5% of portfolio to keep the same survival odds the 1994 Bengen study attached to 4%.
Sequence risk is the second gap. A retiree who withdraws 20000 per year from a portfolio that drops 30% early is drawing from a smaller base, and historical simulations show failure rates rising sharply when the first decade returns are negative. Flexibility rules change the numbers materially: one common variant cuts the withdrawal 10% whenever the portfolio falls below its starting value in real terms, which historically extended survival in most 30-year windows. Treat the calculator output as a first-pass allowance, then test it against a year-by-year projection before committing.