401(k) Retirement Calculator by Age

Enter your age and see where you stand. This 401k retirement calculator by age projects your balance at retirement, compares it against age-decade savings benchmarks, and shows exactly what skipping your employer's match costs you.

How to Use the 401(k) Calculator

1. Enter your current age and planned retirement age. The gap between them is your compounding runway — the single biggest driver of the result, because the later years contribute most of the growth.
2. Add your current 401(k) balance and annual salary. Enter zero for the balance if you are just starting out.
3. Set your contribution rate as a percentage of salary — the amount you put in from each paycheck, pre-tax.
4. Enter your employer's match formula. A "50% match up to 6%" plan means: match percent = 50, match limit = 6. Check your benefits portal or HR documents for the exact numbers.
5. Choose an expected annual return. The default 7% reflects long-run US stock market history after inflation; use 5% for a conservative estimate.

Press Calculate Projection for your projected balance — your contributions, match dollars and growth — plus 5-year milestones. Salary grows 2% yearly; contributions invest once a year.

How the 401(k) Projection Math Works

The calculator runs a year-by-year simulation rather than a single formula, because contributions, raises, and matching interact every year. For each working year it does three things:

Your contribution is salary × your contribution %. The employer match is match % × the smaller of (your contribution, salary × match limit %) — that "smaller of" is the key mechanic: contributions above the limit earn no extra match, so money contributed past the cap works without the bonus. After adding both, the whole balance compounds at your expected return, and then your salary grows 2% for the next year, which raises both contributions automatically.

Repeat this loop for every year until retirement and small annual amounts become enormous. That is compounding doing the heavy lifting: in a typical 35-year projection, investment growth often exceeds the sum of everything you and your employer ever put in.

Worked Example

Meet a 30-year-old earning $80,000 with a $25,000 balance today, contributing 10% of salary, with a 50% employer match up to 6%, and a 7% annual return, retiring at 65:

Look at the acceleration: the first $100,000 takes five years, but the last $700,000 arrives in the final five. That back-loaded growth is pure compounding. Compare the rows with the benchmark table in the next section: at 40 the projection shows $215,689, just under the 3× benchmark of $240,000 — close enough that a small contribution bump closes the gap. And starting at 40 instead of 30, with everything else identical, the balance at 65 drops to roughly $978,000: losing the first decade costs over $1.2 million.

Savings Benchmarks by Age — Are You on Track?

A projection is only useful if you know what "good" looks like at your age. Widely used guidelines (popularized by Fidelity) suggest these salary multiples by decade:

These targets assume roughly 15% of salary saved (including the match) with retirement at 67 — checkpoints, not verdicts. Enter your age and salary above, compare the 5-year milestones with each benchmark row, and if you are behind, raise your contribution rate or your retirement age.

The Employer Match Is a 100% Instant Return — Don't Skip It

Most advice chases an extra percent of market return. The employer match hands you 50–100% instantly, risk-free: with a "50% up to 6%" plan, every dollar you contribute up to 6% of salary becomes $1.50 immediately. Here is what skipping it costs, using the same 30-year-old from the example:

That $445,635 gap is free money plus 35 years of compounding. The rule: capture the entire match first, then work toward 15% of salary including the match, then invest elsewhere. If cash is tight, contributing exactly the match threshold (6% here) beats 5%. Never leave match dollars on the table — it is the only guaranteed 50–100% return in investing.

2026 IRS 401(k) Contribution Limits

The projection above assumes you can contribute whatever percentage you enter — but the IRS caps annual employee contributions. For 2026, the limits depend on your age:

Workers 50 and older can make catch-up contributions of $8,000 on top of the standard limit. The SECURE 2.0 Act added a higher "super" catch-up of $11,250 for savers aged 60–63, recognizing that these are often peak earning years. These caps apply to your own contributions only — your employer match sits on top, subject to a separate combined annual limit. One practical check: multiply your salary by the contribution percentage you entered above. If that number exceeds your age-based cap, the projection is optimistic — trim the percentage to the cap and re-run to see your realistic trajectory.

Limitations

This is a simplified projection, not a financial plan. It assumes a constant annual return, but real markets swing — sequence risk means two people with the same average return can retire with very different balances. It does not model 401(k) fees (0.2%–1% yearly compounds into large sums), IRS contribution limits ($24,500 in 2026 if under 50; $32,500 for ages 50–59 and 64+ ($35,750 for ages 60–63) with catch-ups), taxes, required minimum distributions, inflation, job changes, vesting schedules, or match suspensions. Salary growth is fixed at 2%. Treat the output as a motivational estimate and review your actual plan with a qualified financial advisor.

Retirement accounts reward the same record-keeping instinct as a rental property: dates, amounts and who owes what. Landlords keeping that discipline use the Late Rent Fee Calculator to work out what a late payment actually costs under a lease — the numbers stay boring, which is the point.

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