A retirement calculator helps you plan for a successful and comfortable retirement by estimating how much you may need to save each year to meet your goals. It also demonstrates how your savings will grow over time.

There are many different calculators on the internet that will estimate your needs and provide a range of estimates. The best one will take your specific personal circumstances into account including any anticipated income from sources such as Social Security, pensions, part-time work or other investment assets that you may be planning to sell or liquidate. In addition it will consider your annual living expenses and will incorporate an expected inflation rate to help you make provision for rising costs. Learn more Exponent Investment Management

The calculation can be very detailed and the results will take a bit of work to understand, but it provides many different scenarios to help you get a better understanding of how your savings might progress over time. It will also show you if you have any potential shortfalls in your planning and provide options for making up those shortfalls.

Financial Advisor Edmonton: Maximizing Your Wealth Potential

The important thing to remember is that the estimate you receive is only as good as the input assumptions used. A common rule of thumb is that to be confident that you will have enough money for a secure retirement, you should aim to have saved 25 times your yearly expenses at the point when you intend to stop working (or at the age you hope to retire). This figure assumes that you will not be making any further contributions to your retirement accounts in that year.