Savings Withdrawal Calculator

Free Online Savings Withdrawal Calculator

This savings withdrawal calculator shows you exactly how long your money will last at a given monthly withdrawal amount. Enter your starting balance, how much you plan to withdraw each month, and your expected annual return, and the calculator instantly tells you your runway in years and months, along with a full year-by-year balance chart.

Whether you're drawing down retirement savings, living off a lump sum during a career break, managing an inheritance, or simply want to know how long an emergency fund could stretch, the core question is the same: at this rate of spending, when does the money run out? This free tool answers that question directly, using real month-by-month math instead of a rough rule of thumb.

Why 'How Long Will My Savings Last' Is So Hard to Guess

It's tempting to do this math in your head — divide your balance by your monthly spending and assume that's your runway. But that simple division ignores something important: your remaining balance keeps earning investment returns or interest even while you're withdrawing from it, which can stretch your runway well beyond what simple division suggests.

On the other hand, if your withdrawal is large relative to your balance, that same growth may not be enough to offset what you're taking out, and the balance can shrink faster than expected once growth stops being able to keep up. This calculator runs the actual month-by-month simulation so you get an accurate number instead of a rough guess in either direction.

How This Calculator Works

Each month, the calculator withdraws your chosen amount from the balance, then grows what's left by your expected monthly return. It repeats this every month until the balance reaches zero, or until a long 60-year cap is reached, whichever comes first.

• Remaining Balance = (Balance − Monthly Withdrawal) × (1 + Monthly Return)
• Monthly Return = Expected Annual Return ÷ 12 ÷ 100
• This repeats every month, tracking total withdrawn and total growth earned along the way
• If the optional inflation adjustment is turned on, the withdrawal amount increases once per year to keep pace with rising prices

How to Check Your Savings Runway — Step by Step

Here's how the calculator builds your runway estimate:

• Step 1: Enter your current total savings as the starting balance.
• Step 2: Enter the fixed monthly amount you plan to withdraw.
• Step 3: Enter the average annual return you expect your remaining balance to earn.
• Step 4: The calculator withdraws and grows your balance month by month until it hits zero.
• Step 5: The result shows exactly how many years and months your savings last, plus the maximum amount you could withdraw forever without shrinking your balance at all.

Worked Example — $200,000 at $2,000 a Month

Suppose you have $200,000 in savings, plan to withdraw $2,000 every month, and expect a 5% average annual return.

• Step 1: Monthly return = 5% ÷ 12 ÷ 100 ≈ 0.004167.
• Step 2: In month one, the balance drops to $198,000 after the withdrawal, then grows by roughly $825 in interest.
• Step 3: This same pattern — withdraw, then grow — repeats every single month.
• Step 4: Because $2,000 a month ($24,000 a year) is a 12% withdrawal rate on $200,000, well above what a 5% return can sustain, the balance shrinks steadily over time.
• Step 5: Running the full simulation shows this balance lasts roughly 10–11 years before reaching zero — much shorter than the simple '200,000 ÷ 2,000 = 100 months' guess would suggest, because that guess ignores the withdrawals compounding down the base that earns growth.

Understanding Your 'Perpetual Withdrawal' Number

Alongside your runway, this calculator shows the highest monthly amount you could theoretically withdraw forever without ever shrinking your original balance — simply your balance multiplied by your expected annual return, divided by twelve. Withdrawing at or below this figure means your balance can, in theory, last indefinitely, since investment growth fully replaces what you take out.

Withdrawing above this figure isn't necessarily a mistake — many people intentionally spend down a balance over a fixed number of years rather than preserve it forever — but it's useful to know exactly where that line sits, so any decision to withdraw more is an informed one rather than an accident.

Fixed Withdrawals vs. Inflation-Adjusted Withdrawals

By default, this calculator uses a fixed monthly withdrawal amount, which is simple to plan around but means your real, inflation-adjusted spending power slowly shrinks every year as prices rise. Turning on the inflation adjustment increases your withdrawal amount once a year to match your expected inflation rate, so your purchasing power stays roughly constant — closer to how a real household budget behaves over a long retirement or career break.

Naturally, an inflation-adjusted withdrawal plan tends to run out faster than a fixed one, since the amount being withdrawn keeps growing every year. Comparing both settings side by side is a useful way to see the real trade-off between preserving your current spending power and stretching your money as far as possible.

What Affects How Long Your Savings Will Last

Three things drive your runway more than anything else: how much you withdraw relative to your balance, the return your remaining balance earns, and whether your withdrawal grows over time. A withdrawal rate close to or below your expected return can last indefinitely, while a withdrawal rate well above it will always eventually deplete the balance, just at different speeds depending on the gap.

It's worth testing a few different monthly withdrawal amounts in this calculator to see how sensitive your runway is to spending. Often, a fairly small reduction in monthly withdrawal can add years, sometimes many years, to how long the money lasts, because it changes whether growth is working with you or against you.

Common Uses for a Savings Withdrawal Calculator

This kind of calculator is useful well beyond traditional retirement. People use it to plan how long a severance payout or redundancy package will cover living expenses, how long savings can fund an early retirement or 'mini-retirement' career break, how long an inheritance or windfall can be safely drawn from, or simply to stress-test an emergency fund against a realistic monthly spending figure.

In every case, the underlying question is identical — a starting balance, a spending rate, and an expected return — which is exactly what this calculator is built to answer clearly and quickly.

Common Mistakes When Estimating Savings Runway

The most common mistake is the simple division shortcut — balance divided by monthly spending — which ignores investment growth entirely and can be significantly wrong in either direction. Another common mistake is assuming a return that's too optimistic, which can make a spending plan look far safer than it actually is; it's generally safer to test a conservative return figure alongside an optimistic one.

It's also easy to forget that withdrawing a fixed dollar amount slowly loses purchasing power to inflation every year, even though the number in your account statement doesn't reflect that. Testing the inflation-adjusted option, even just once, helps you see the more realistic version of your plan.

What This Calculator Doesn't Account For

This projection assumes a constant average monthly return, which simplifies reality — actual investment or interest returns vary, sometimes significantly, from month to month and year to year. It also doesn't include taxes on withdrawals or investment gains, account fees, irregular or one-off withdrawals, or other income sources that might reduce how much you need to draw from this particular balance.

Treat the result as a clear, dependable starting estimate rather than a guarantee, and revisit the numbers periodically as your actual balance, spending, and market conditions become clearer over time.

Simple Tips to Make Your Savings Last Longer

If your runway is shorter than you'd like, a few practical changes can add years to it. Trimming your monthly withdrawal, even by a small amount, has an outsized effect because you're both taking out less and leaving more balance behind to keep earning growth. Delaying when you start withdrawing, even by a year or two, gives your balance extra time to grow before the drawdown begins.

Reviewing how your remaining balance is invested also matters — cash sitting in a low-interest account will stretch far less than the same balance earning a more typical long-term investment return, though that usually comes with more year-to-year ups and downs. Running this calculator with a few different withdrawal amounts and return assumptions side by side is an easy way to see which changes actually move the needle for your specific numbers.

Savings Withdrawal Calculator vs. Retirement Withdrawal Calculator

This calculator and a dedicated retirement withdrawal calculator answer closely related but slightly different questions. This one starts with a fixed monthly dollar amount and tells you how long that amount can be sustained — useful when you already know roughly what you need to spend each month, regardless of the reason.

A retirement-specific withdrawal calculator, by contrast, typically starts with a target withdrawal rate or a target number of retirement years and works out the sustainable amount from there. If you're specifically planning a traditional retirement with a fixed target duration in mind, it's worth checking both tools — one confirms how long a given spending level lasts, the other confirms what spending level fits a given retirement length.

Why Use This Savings Withdrawal Calculator?

This tool replaces guesswork with an accurate, month-by-month simulation, showing you exactly how long your savings will last at your chosen withdrawal amount — not a rough division, and not a generic industry rule. It also shows the maximum amount you could withdraw forever, so you always know exactly how your current plan compares to a fully sustainable one.

Whether you're testing different monthly spending amounts, comparing a fixed withdrawal against an inflation-adjusted one, or simply want peace of mind about how far your savings will stretch, this calculator gives you a clear, visual answer in seconds — with a full breakdown table you can download and revisit anytime.