401(k) Retirement Savings Calculator

What this tool does

The 401(k) Retirement Savings Calculator projects your account balance year by year from today until retirement, factoring in your own contribution rate, your employer's match, expected investment returns, salary growth, and inflation — not just a single compound-interest formula treated as a black box. It shows the full year-by-year schedule, so you can see exactly how much comes from your paycheck, how much comes from your employer, and how much is pure investment growth.

It also checks something a lot of people get wrong without realizing it: if your contribution percentage is lower than your plan's match cap, you're leaving free money on the table every single paycheck. This calculator flags exactly how much that's costing you per year. It also respects the real 2026 IRS employee deferral limits — $24,500 standard, $32,500 for those 50+, and $35,750 for the special 60–63 catch-up bracket — capping contributions automatically where they'd otherwise exceed the legal limit.

How to use the 401(k) calculator

• Enter your current age, target retirement age, current 401(k) balance, and annual salary.
• Set your contribution percentage and, if your plan offers it, an annual auto-escalation rate (some plans bump your contribution 1% a year automatically).
• Enter your employer's match rate and the salary percentage it caps out at — for example, "50% match up to 6% of salary" is a common plan structure.
• Adjust the expected annual return, salary growth, and inflation assumptions to match your own outlook.
• Check the warning note if you're not capturing the full employer match, and review the year-by-year table for the full trajectory.

Common use cases

• "Am I contributing enough to get the full match?" — the single most common 401(k) planning question, answered instantly with a dollar figure.
• Comparing contribution scenarios — see the real long-term difference between contributing 4% versus 10%, or starting 5 years earlier versus later.
• Planning for a raise or job change — model a new salary and see how it shifts your retirement trajectory.
• Sanity-checking a target retirement age — see whether pushing retirement out a few years meaningfully changes your projected balance.

Frequently asked questions

What's the 2026 401(k) contribution limit?

The IRS employee deferral limit for 2026 is $24,500. Employees 50 and older can add a $8,000 catch-up contribution for a total of $32,500, and employees aged 60–63 get a higher catch-up of $11,250 for a total of $35,750 — this calculator applies the correct limit automatically based on your age in each projected year.

How does employer matching actually work?

Most plans match a percentage of what you contribute, up to a cap expressed as a percentage of your salary — e.g. "50% of your contribution, up to 6% of salary" means if you put in 6%, your employer adds another 3%; if you put in only 3%, they only add 1.5%, and contributing above 6% doesn't earn any extra match.

Is leaving employer match unclaimed really that costly?

Yes — it's usually described as leaving free, guaranteed money on the table, since an employer match is effectively an instant, guaranteed return on your contribution before any market growth even happens, something no other investment can promise.

What return rate should I assume?

Long-term historical stock market averages are often cited in the 7-10% nominal range before inflation, though your actual portfolio mix (stocks vs. bonds) and market conditions will move that number — many planners use a more conservative 6-7% for long-range projections.

Why does the calculator show both a nominal and inflation-adjusted balance?

A dollar in 30 years won't buy what a dollar buys today — showing the balance in "today's dollars" (adjusted for your assumed inflation rate) gives a much more realistic sense of the actual purchasing power you're projecting, rather than an inflated headline number.