Quick Retirement Check
Free Monte Carlo Retirement Calculator
Get your retirement probability in 60 seconds
No signup required. Just enter your age and income to get started — we'll fill in typical values for everything else, or you can customize.
We run 2,000 Monte Carlo simulations using randomized market returns, inflation, and Social Security adjustments to estimate the probability that your savings will last through retirement. It's the same method used by financial advisors — now available in seconds, for free.
Enter Your Information
Only your age and income are required. Don't know the rest? We'll use sensible defaults or you can load typical values for your age group.
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Your Results
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How this Monte Carlo retirement calculator works
The Quick Check answers one question: if you keep saving at your current rate, retire at 67, and spend what you expect to spend, how likely is it that your savings last until age 90? It does not give you a single projected balance, because a single balance hides the thing that matters most — how much the outcome depends on the order in which good and bad market years arrive.
Instead it runs 2,000 simulated lifetimes. Each one draws a different sequence of market returns and inflation, grows your savings until retirement, then withdraws your inflation-adjusted spending each year, net of Social Security. The result is the share of those lifetimes in which the money never ran out. That share is your probability of success.
The assumptions behind your number
Only your age and income are required. Everything else falls back to a stated default you can override: a 10% savings rate, retirement spending of 80% of what you spend today, and a Social Security benefit estimated from your income if you don't enter one from your statement.
The market model treats your whole portfolio as one blended investment averaging a 7% annual return with 15% volatility, and inflation averaging 3% a year. Retirement is assumed at 67, Social Security starts at 67, and the plan has to last to 90. Your 401(k), IRA, Roth and taxable balances are added together; the Quick Check does not model the taxes on withdrawals from each, your specific funds, or one-off costs such as a home purchase or long-term care.
Those simplifications are what make it a 60-second check rather than a plan. They are also why two people with the same headline number can be in quite different positions — which is the gap a full Retirement Buddy plan is built to close.
How to read your result
Your probability is labelled Excellent at 90% or above, Very Good from 80%, Good from 70%, Fair from 60%, and Needs Attention below that. Most planners treat roughly 75–90% as a healthy range. A result near 100% is not automatically better: it often means you could spend more, or retire sooner, than you are planning to.
A lower number is not a forecast that you will run out of money. It counts the simulated lifetimes where the plan, followed rigidly with no changes, ran dry — usually late in life, after a weak first decade of returns. Real retirees adjust: they trim spending after a bad year, work a little longer, or claim Social Security later. Each of those moves the number, and the Quick Check shows you which direction you are starting from.
The quickest levers to test are the ones you control: your retirement spending, your savings rate, and the Social Security figure from your own statement in place of the estimate. Change one at a time and re-run the check to see how sensitive your result is to it.
Common Questions
Is the Quick Retirement Check really free?
Yes. It needs no sign-up and no email address. Run it as many times as you like with different numbers.
What is a good retirement success probability?
Most planners aim for roughly 75–90%. Below that, small changes to spending or retirement age usually make a large difference. Well above 90% can mean you are under-spending — saving money you could enjoy without meaningfully raising your risk.
Why does my result change when I adjust retirement spending?
Spending is usually the most powerful input. Every dollar of yearly spending has to be funded for every year of retirement and rises with inflation, so a modest cut compounds into a much larger difference in how long the money lasts.
How accurate is a Monte Carlo retirement calculator?
It is a way of measuring risk, not predicting the future. Running 2,000 randomized market paths shows how your plan holds up across good and bad decades, but every result depends on the assumptions — the 7% average return, 3% inflation, and age-90 horizon used here among them.
Is this financial advice?
No. Retirement Buddy is not a registered investment advisor. The Quick Check is an educational estimate to help you understand where you stand and which questions to ask next.