Add up the big categories to size the income your retirement will actually need.
A retirement expenses calculator adds up the major spending categories you'll face in retirement, housing, food, healthcare, transportation, and leisure, to estimate the annual income your retirement will actually require.
Rules of thumb suggest retirees spend 70-85% of pre-retirement income, but your own categories are a far better guide. Housing and healthcare often dominate, and healthcare tends to rise with age. Building the number bottom-up from what you actually expect to spend beats guessing from a percentage.
Once you have an annual spending figure, the nest egg to support it follows directly: at a 4% withdrawal rate, you need about 25 times your annual expenses invested. Lowering expenses does double duty, it reduces both the income you need and the savings required to produce it, which is why trimming fixed costs before retirement is so powerful.
Many retirees spend 70-85% of their pre-retirement income, but building it up from your real categories, housing, healthcare, food, transport, leisure, is more accurate. Enter yours above.
Healthcare typically increases, while work-related and mortgage costs often fall. Travel is frequently high early in retirement and tapers later.
At a 4% withdrawal rate, about 25 times your annual expenses. The calculator shows the implied nest egg.
See the exact formula and a worked example on our methodology page.