Savings Withdrawal Calculator

At a 4% annual return, a $100,000 balance withdrawing $1,000 a month lasts a little over 10 years before hitting zero, with total interest earned along the way helping stretch the balance further than the raw math of $100,000 divided by $1,000 would suggest. The exact answer depends on your rate, your compounding frequency, and whether you plan to increase withdrawals over time to keep pace with rising costs.

The underlying math overlaps, but the framing is different. An annuity payout typically models a fixed contract with an insurer, often with a set structure and fewer moving parts. This calculator is built for withdrawing from any savings or investment balance — a brokerage account, a high-yield savings account, an early-retirement fund — and adds features that matter more in that context, like growing your withdrawal amount over time and choosing to leave a remaining balance instead of draining the account to zero.

It increases your withdrawal amount by a fixed percentage each year, which is a simple way to model rising living costs — if you start by withdrawing $2,000 a month with a 2.5% annual growth rate, you'd be withdrawing roughly $2,050 a month by year two, and so on. Leaving it at 0% keeps your withdrawal flat in dollar terms for the entire payout period, which is easier to plan around but loses purchasing power over a long horizon.

It depends on what the money is for. Fully depleting the balance maximizes what you can withdraw each period, but leaves nothing behind — a reasonable choice for a fund built specifically to be spent down. Leaving a remaining balance target (even a modest cushion) is worth considering if you want a safety margin for a longer-than-expected lifespan, an emergency reserve, or something to pass on, and the calculator's remaining balance field lets you model either approach directly.

Not by federal law. The Federal Reserve removed the mandatory six-withdrawal limit on savings accounts in 2020 and has kept reserve requirements at zero since, with no indication it plans to bring the limit back. That said, plenty of banks kept their own version of the six-withdrawal cap in place voluntarily and still charge a fee for exceeding it, so it's worth checking your specific account's terms rather than assuming either way.

When you're solving for duration, yes — a higher rate means your balance earns more between withdrawals, stretching it further. When you're solving for withdrawal amount over a fixed number of years, a higher rate lets you withdraw more per period rather than making the money last longer, since the calculator is deliberately depleting the balance by the end of that fixed period either way.

This calculator answers the spending side of the equation: given a balance, how long it lasts or how much it supports. The saving side — how much you need to accumulate before you can start withdrawing at all — is a separate question with its own moving parts, like your target retirement age and how much you're currently able to invest each month.