Safe withdrawal rate calculator
The 4% rule says you can withdraw 4% of your portfolio in year one, then raise that amount with inflation each year. This tool runs your plan forward year by year to see whether the money lasts — and, if not, the year it runs out.
Show year-by-year table
The logic behind the 4% rule
The 4% rule comes from the 1998 Trinity Study, which tested how retirement portfolios of US stocks and bonds would have held up across many overlapping 30-year windows of history. It found that withdrawing 4% of the starting balance in year one — then raising that dollar amount with inflation each year — let the portfolio survive the large majority of those windows. That’s where "4%" comes from.
This calculator models the same withdrawal schedule, but with a constant return you choose rather than real market history:
balanceₙ = (balanceₙ₋₁ − withdrawalₙ) × (1 + return) · withdrawalₙ = withdrawal₁ × (1 + inflation)ⁿ⁻¹
The big limitation is that markets don’t deliver the same return every year. A run of poor returns early in retirement — while you’re still withdrawing — can permanently damage a portfolio even if the long-run average is healthy. This is sequence-of-returns risk, and it’s why a smooth projection like this one is optimistic compared with the real world. The original 4% figure also assumed a specific US stock/bond mix and a 30-year horizon; longer retirements, higher fees, or different assets can push the safe rate lower. To see how the underlying return compounds, try the compound return calculator.
Educational model on the assumptions you enter — a constant return and inflation. It is not a retirement plan, a safe-rate guarantee, or financial advice, and it can’t see sequence-of-returns risk, taxes, or fees. No market data is used. Your figures never leave the page — the calculation runs entirely in your browser. The page loads standard pageview analytics, which never sees your numbers.
This math stops at what you typed in.
Tradune runs it continuously on your real holdings — with your money-weighted return next to a buy-and-hold SPY twin, and SEC insider filings flagged on the stocks you own.
Educational analytics — not investment advice.