Retirement Savings Calculator: Are You on Track?

The most anxiety-producing question in personal finance isn't "am I saving enough?" — it's "how do I even know if I'm saving enough?" The answer requires a benchmark to compare against. Let's build that benchmark from the ground up, then show you how FIRE planning requires a significantly more aggressive trajectory.

The Standard Benchmarks (Fidelity's Rule of Thumb)

Fidelity Investments, one of the largest retirement plan providers, publishes widely cited savings benchmarks based on your annual salary. These are designed for traditional retirement at age 67:

So if you earn $80,000/year at age 40, you should have roughly $240,000 saved. At age 50, $480,000. These are solid benchmarks for traditional retirement, but they're completely inadequate if you want to retire in your 40s or 50s.

Why FIRE Savers Need to Be Way Ahead

The Fidelity benchmarks assume:

• You retire at 67 (Social Security kicks in immediately)
• You have a pension or other income source supplementing withdrawals
• You have roughly 20–25 years of retirement to fund

FIRE planning requires funding 30–50 years of retirement with no Social Security bridge for decades, no pension, and a much larger portfolio-to-expenses ratio. A person retiring at 45 on $60,000/year needs $1,500,000 — which is far more than 10× their salary if they earn $80,000.

The practical upshot: FIRE savers should aim to be 3–5 years ahead of the Fidelity benchmarks at every age, so they can exit the workforce early while maintaining full safe-withdrawal-rate coverage.

On-Track vs. Off-Track: The Full Picture

Here's a comprehensive table showing what "on track" looks like for two different goals at different salary levels. Assumes 7% average annual return, consistent saving:

Age	Salary	On Track (Retire 67)	On Track (FIRE at 50)
30	$60,000	$60,000	$120,000
30	$90,000	$90,000	$180,000
35	$70,000	$140,000	$350,000
40	$80,000	$240,000	$650,000
40	$100,000	$300,000	$800,000
45	$85,000	$425,000	$1,100,000
50	$90,000	$540,000	$1,500,000 (target)

The FIRE at 50 column essentially requires you to arrive at your FIRE number by age 50. Since FIRE numbers are based on spending (not salary), these are approximate — use them as directional guideposts rather than precise targets.

What "On Track for FIRE at 50" Actually Looks Like

Let's take a concrete example. Danielle is 32, earns $78,000/year, spends $4,500/month ($54,000/year), and wants to retire at 50. Her FIRE number: $54,000 × 25 = $1,350,000.

She has 18 years to reach $1,350,000 from wherever she is today. At 7% return:

• If she has $0 saved today and saves $3,500/month: she'll reach $1.35M in ~18 years ✓
• If she has $100,000 saved today and saves $2,800/month: she'll reach $1.35M in ~18 years ✓
• If she has $200,000 saved today and saves $2,200/month: she'll reach $1.35M in ~18 years ✓

Notice how the starting balance dramatically reduces the required monthly savings. That's compound interest doing its work. Every dollar saved young is worth $4–$8 by retirement at 7% returns.

Catch-Up Strategies If You're Behind

Strategy 1: Increase your savings rate

This is the most powerful lever. Going from saving 15% to 25% of a $90,000 salary means an extra $750/month, or $9,000/year. Over 15 years at 7% returns, that's an additional $235,000. A single savings rate increase, sustained, makes an enormous difference.

Strategy 2: Cut a major expense category

Housing is typically the highest-leverage target. Moving from a $1,800/month apartment to a $1,200/month one frees $600/month immediately. Alternatively, eliminating a car payment or refinancing to a lower interest rate can generate $300–$600/month of additional investable cash.

Strategy 3: Increase income

A job change producing a $15,000 salary increase, all of which goes to savings, adds $1,250/month. Over 15 years at 7%, that's $390,000 in additional portfolio value. Side income — consulting, freelancing, rental income — works the same way, especially if lifestyle spending doesn't increase with income.

Strategy 4: Adjust the target

Retiring at 52 instead of 50 doesn't sound significant, but it adds two more years of contributions and two fewer years of withdrawals. At $3,000/month savings rate and 7% returns, two extra years adds roughly $78,000 in contributions plus growth — often enough to close a meaningful gap.

Projecting Your Savings to Retirement Age

The compound growth formula for projecting where your savings land:

Future Value = PV × (1+r)^n + PMT × [((1+r)^n − 1) / r]

Where PV = current portfolio, r = monthly return, n = months to retirement, PMT = monthly contribution.

For most purposes, using round numbers at 7% annual return (0.583% monthly) is accurate enough:

Starting Balance	Monthly Savings	7% Return — 15 Years	7% Return — 20 Years
$50,000	$1,500	$618,000	$983,000
$100,000	$2,000	$919,000	$1,446,000
$150,000	$2,500	$1,220,000	$1,908,000
$200,000	$3,000	$1,521,000	$2,371,000
$300,000	$3,500	$1,964,000	$3,035,000

Using MyFIRE to Run Your Numbers

The projections above use simplified math. MyFIRE's planner layers in Monte Carlo simulation — running 1,000+ market scenarios to show you not just the expected outcome but the range: what happens if markets return 4% for a decade? What if they return 10%? Knowing the spread of outcomes is more useful than a single projected number.

Enter your current savings, monthly contribution, expected return, and target retirement age. The tool tells you whether you'll make it, and if not, exactly how much more you need to save per month to close the gap.

Common Mistakes When Benchmarking Your Savings

The benchmarks above are useful, but four mistakes turn a helpful benchmark into a misleading one. Watching for these keeps your self-assessment honest.

Mistake 1: Comparing gross salary to net savings capacity

Two people earning $90,000 can have wildly different savings capacity depending on state income tax, health insurance premiums, and cost of living. A benchmark tied to gross salary assumes a fairly uniform tax and cost environment — reasonable as a rough guide, but not a substitute for tracking your actual monthly cash flow.

Mistake 2: Ignoring account-type mix

$400,000 split evenly between a traditional 401(k) and a Roth IRA is not worth the same as $400,000 entirely in a traditional 401(k). The traditional balance still owes income tax on withdrawal; the Roth balance doesn't. A rough rule of thumb: discount pre-tax balances by your expected effective retirement tax rate (often 12–15% for FIRE-level spending) when comparing to a benchmark meant to represent spendable wealth.

Mistake 3: Counting illiquid net worth as retirement savings

Home equity, a paid-off car, or a 529 plan for a child are real assets, but none of them fund your monthly grocery bill in retirement. Keep your FIRE benchmark restricted to accounts you could actually draw from: brokerage, 401(k)/403(b), traditional and Roth IRAs, and HSA balances earmarked for retirement healthcare.

Mistake 4: Treating a single bad year as a trend

A year with a large emergency-room bill or a job gap doesn't mean your trajectory is broken — it means one year was expensive. Look at your 3-year rolling average savings rate instead of any single year before deciding you need to overhaul your plan.

How Account Type Affects Your Real Number

Contribution limits shape how fast you can close a savings gap. For 2026, the IRS allows up to $24,500 in employee 401(k)/403(b) deferrals, plus an $8,000 catch-up for savers age 50–59 or 64+, and a larger $11,250 "super catch-up" for ages 60–63 under SECURE 2.0. IRAs (Traditional and Roth combined) allow $7,500, plus a $1,100 catch-up at 50+. A married couple both maxing 401(k)s and IRAs at the standard limits can shelter $64,000 a year before any catch-up — a meaningful lever if you're behind and have the income to use it.

HSAs deserve a specific mention because they're often left out of savings benchmarks entirely. For 2026 the HSA contribution limit is $4,400 for individual coverage and $8,750 for family coverage, with a $1,000 catch-up at 55+. Money contributed, invested, and left untouched until retirement functions as a second, triple-tax-advantaged retirement account — deductible going in, tax-free growth, and tax-free withdrawal for qualified medical expenses at any age (and penalty-free for any purpose after 65, taxed like a traditional IRA).

Worked example: Roth-heavy vs. traditional-heavy portfolios

Consider two savers, both with $600,000 saved at age 45 and both planning to spend $60,000/year in retirement.

• Priya has $600,000 entirely in a traditional 401(k). Withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income, so her true "spendable" number is lower than the balance suggests — she needs to withdraw more than $60,000 gross to net $60,000 after tax.
• Diego has $600,000 entirely in a Roth IRA. His $60,000/year withdrawal is entirely tax-free, so his balance supports his spending goal directly, with no tax haircut.

Neither approach is wrong — traditional accounts got a tax deduction going in, which is real value — but the benchmark comparison "$600,000 is $600,000" breaks down once withdrawals begin. When comparing your savings to a benchmark, either use pre-tax figures consistently (compare gross-to-gross) or adjust each account balance for its expected tax treatment before comparing.

Catching Up From Behind: A Worked Example

Marcus is 42, earns $95,000/year, and has $180,000 saved. Comparing to the FIRE-at-50 style benchmarks above, that puts him meaningfully behind pace for his age. He wants to retire at 60 with $50,000/year in spending — a FIRE number of $50,000 × 25 = $1,250,000.

At his current $1,200/month savings rate and a 7% average annual return, Marcus's $180,000 plus 18 years of $1,200/month contributions grows to approximately $1,098,000 by 60 — about $152,000 short of his target. Here's what closing that gap actually requires:

• Do nothing differently: Reaches ~$1,098,000 by 60 — $152,000 short of goal.
• Increase savings to about $1,575/month (an extra $375/month, achievable through a raise or trimming one expense category): reaches approximately $1,250,000 by 60 — goal met.
• Alternative: work 2 extra years to 62 at the original $1,200/month rate: reaches approximately $1,287,000 — a similar outcome achieved through time instead of cash flow.
• Combination approach: increase to $1,400/month and retire at 61 instead of 60: reaches approximately $1,279,000, with more margin for error than either single-lever approach.

This is the practical value of running the numbers rather than relying on anxiety: Marcus's "behind" position closes with one modest, sustainable change — not a dramatic life overhaul.

Savings Milestones You Can Actually Feel

Round-number milestones matter less mathematically than psychologically, but they're worth naming because they mark real, felt shifts in how a portfolio behaves and how it feels to watch it grow month over month.

• First $100,000: Often the slowest milestone to reach, since early growth is dominated by contributions rather than returns. At 7% growth, $100,000 only generates about $7,000/year — noticeable, but not yet a meaningful accelerant.
• $250,000: Growth starts to rival contributions. $250,000 at 7% generates roughly $17,500/year — for many savers, that's now larger than what they're personally contributing each year.
• $500,000: Often called the "halfway-feels-like-two-thirds" milestone, because compounding has done enough work that the remaining distance to $1,000,000 takes noticeably less time than the first $500,000 did, at a constant savings rate.
• $1,000,000: At 7% growth, a $1,000,000 portfolio generates about $70,000/year before any withdrawals — for many FIRE savers, this is the point where the portfolio's own growth exceeds their annual spending.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does net worth count as retirement savings?

No — net worth includes everything you own minus everything you owe: home equity, car value, business equity, retirement accounts, and taxable investments. Your retirement savings benchmark should only include liquid, growth-oriented assets you could realistically draw from in retirement: brokerage accounts, 401(k)/403(b)/457 balances, IRAs, and HSA balances earmarked for medical spending. A million dollars of home equity is real wealth, but it doesn't generate monthly income unless you sell, downsize, or take on debt against it.

Should I include my emergency fund?

Generally no. An emergency fund sitting in a high-yield savings account is doing a different job — covering job loss, medical emergencies, and major unplanned expenses without forcing you to sell investments at a bad time. Counting it toward your retirement number double-books the same dollars for two different purposes.

What about employer 401(k) match?

Employer match counts toward your total balance once it vests, but don't count on it when calculating your own contribution rate. If your employer matches 50% up to 6% of salary and you earn $80,000, that's $2,400/year of "free" money on top of your own $4,800 contribution — a meaningful boost, but your personal savings rate (the number that predicts your FIRE date) should still be measured off your own contributions plus growth, since the match doesn't change how much of your paycheck you're setting aside.

How often should I recheck my number?

Once a year is enough for most people — more frequent checking tends to produce stress without producing better decisions, since a single quarter of market performance rarely changes the underlying trajectory. Recheck sooner if your income, spending, or retirement timeline changes materially: a job change, a new child, or a move to a different cost-of-living area.

Adjusting Benchmarks for Where You Live

National salary-multiplier benchmarks assume a national-average cost of living, which nobody actually experiences. A $90,000 salary in a low-cost metro area can support a savings rate and future spending target very different from the same salary in a high-cost coastal city.

The fix isn't a different multiplier — it's grounding your FIRE number in your actual (or planned) retirement-year spending rather than your current salary. Someone earning $120,000 in an expensive city but planning to retire somewhere with a 30% lower cost of living should size their FIRE number off the lower future spending figure, not their current salary. This is one of the most common overcorrections in FIRE planning: over-saving for a cost structure you don't intend to keep.

Savings for Irregular or Self-Employed Income

Salary-based benchmarks assume a steady paycheck, which breaks down for freelancers, commissioned salespeople, and business owners whose income swings month to month. Two adjustments make the benchmarks usable anyway.

• Benchmark off trailing 12-month average income, not your best or worst month. A single strong quarter shouldn't inflate your target, and a single slow quarter shouldn't trigger panic.
• Save a percentage, not a fixed dollar amount, and let it float with income. Committing to save 20% of every payment received (routed automatically at the time of deposit) keeps your savings rate consistent even when the dollar amount varies significantly month to month.

Self-employed savers also have access to higher contribution limits through a Solo 401(k) or SEP IRA, which can shelter substantially more than a standard employee 401(k) once net business income supports it — worth exploring with a tax professional once your self-employment income is stable enough to plan around.

What to Do the Moment You Finish This Article

Benchmarks are only useful if they turn into an action. Three concrete next steps, in order of impact:

1. Add up your actual liquid retirement savings today — brokerage, 401(k)/403(b), traditional and Roth IRAs, and any HSA balance you're treating as a retirement account. Write down one number.
2. Compare it honestly to your FIRE number, not the traditional-retirement benchmark, if early retirement is the actual goal. The gap between "on track for 67" and "on track for FIRE" is usually the single biggest source of unnecessary anxiety in this whole exercise.
3. Run the projection with your real numbers — current savings, monthly contribution, expected return, and target retirement age — using the calculator above or the full planner linked below. A projected shortfall is only actionable once you know its exact size in dollars per month, not as a vague feeling of being "behind."

Most people who feel anxious about their retirement savings have never actually run the numbers — they're reacting to an unspecified fear rather than a calculated gap. Once the gap has a dollar figure attached to it, it becomes something you can plan around instead of something you avoid thinking about. A $375/month gap, a two-year delay, or a modest expense cut are all concrete, achievable moves — very different from the vague, looping sense that you'll "never catch up," which is rarely true once the actual math is honestly laid out on the table in front of you.