401(k) Retirement Savings Calculator
Project your 401(k) balance at retirement based on your age, salary, contribution rate, and employer match, including IRS contribution limits, catch-up contributions, and your projected balance in today's dollars.
Employer match
Additional match tier (optional)
Your projected balance will appear here
Enter your age, salary, contribution rate, and employer match, then click calculate.
Quick Answer
A 401(k) calculator projects your retirement balance by growing your salary and contributions year over year, adding any employer match, and compounding the total at your expected investment return minus fees, up to your chosen retirement age.
How It Works: Formula & Variables
Balance = (Balance + Contribution + Match) × (1 + Return − Fees)
- Contribution
- Your salary times your contribution percentage, capped at the IRS limit for your age each year.
- Match
- Your employer's match rate applied to your contribution, up to their salary cap, including a second tier if your plan has one.
- Return − Fees
- Your expected annual investment return, minus plan administration and fund fees.
- Today's dollars
- The final balance divided by your expected inflation rate, compounded over the same number of years, to show purchasing power in today's terms.
Worked Examples
Example 1: Age 35, $75,000 salary, 8% contribution
A 35-year-old earning $75,000 who contributes 8% of salary, with a 100% employer match up to 3%, a 2% annual raise, a 7% return, and 0.5% in fees, ends up with roughly $1,013,000 by age 65, about $483,000 of that in today's dollars once you factor in 2.5% assumed inflation.
Example 2: Age 45, starting later with a higher contribution rate
A 45-year-old with a $30,000 starting balance and a $90,000 salary who contributes 12%, using the same match, raise, return, and fee assumptions, still reaches roughly $717,000 by age 65. A higher contribution rate can close a lot of the gap for someone who started saving later.
Key Concepts
Time matters more than timing: Money contributed in your 20s and 30s has decades to compound, so starting early and staying consistent usually beats trying to catch up later with bigger contributions.
An employer match is close to a guaranteed return: If your plan offers one and you contribute less than the threshold needed to get the full match, you're passing up money that no investment can reliably match on its own.
IRS limits rise with age for a reason: The catch-up and super catch-up contributions exist so people closer to retirement can put away more in the years they often need it most.
Common Mistakes
Contributing just below the match threshold: Contributing 2% when your employer matches up to 3% means you're leaving money on the table every pay period, for no real benefit.
Writing off fees because they look small: A 1% annual fee sounds minor, but it compounds against your balance for decades and quietly eats into growth that would otherwise be tax-deferred.
Assuming a flat contribution percentage always stays under the IRS limit: As your salary grows, a fixed percentage can eventually bump into the annual IRS cap, which limits how much can go in regardless of what your target percentage would otherwise allow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Each year, your salary grows by your expected raise rate, and your contribution (capped at the IRS limit for your age) plus any employer match gets added to your balance. That balance then grows at your expected rate of return, minus plan fees, compounding year after year until you retire.
For 2026, the IRS caps employee contributions at $24,500 if you're under 50. Workers 50 and up, other than those turning 60 to 63, can add an $8,000 catch-up contribution for a total of $32,500. Workers 60 to 63 get a bigger "super catch-up" of $11,250, bringing their total to $35,750. This calculator applies the right limit automatically based on your age in each projected year, so you don't have to look it up yourself.
A typical match formula looks something like "100% up to 3%," meaning your employer puts in a dollar for every dollar you contribute, up to 3% of your salary. Some plans stack a second, lower-rate tier on top of that, like an extra 50% match on the next 2% of salary. This calculator handles both a primary match tier and an optional second tier, so you can model your actual plan instead of a generic one.
A dollar decades from now won't buy what a dollar buys today, because of inflation. The inflation-adjusted figure discounts your projected balance back to today's purchasing power, which gives you a more honest comparison against your current cost of living than just staring at a big future number.
Plan administration and fund expense fees get subtracted from your rate of return every year, so even something that looks small, like a 1% fee, compounds against you the same way returns compound for you. Over a few decades, that gap can shrink your final balance more than most people expect.
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