Pension calculator

Just enter your age, roughly how much you earn each year (before tax), and any current pensions savings you have. The calculator then shows you:

1. How much you might need saved in your pension pot to live comfortably when you stop work
2. How much you would need to save per month between now and then, to reach that goal
3. How much you would get each month when you retire

You can see how your target pension pot at retirement is broken down between the amounts you pay in, what the government adds in tax top-ups, and how much you might earn in compound interest (what we call Einstein Money).

Advanced Settings

You can use our advanced settings to adjust the amount you want to save today, and the amount you want to get when you retire. We will then show you how you would need to increase your payments over time to reach your goal.

You can choose how quickly you 'ramp-up' your payments, which will also affect the amount you need to save.

A good rule of thumb is that you might need about 2/3rds what you earned while working to be comfortable in retirement. It's impossible to know exactly what your life will look like when you want to stop working, so it can be helpful to use a rule like this just to give you a sense.

Either choose how much you earn at the moment, or how much you think you will be earning when you are settled in your career, then multiply that number by 2/3rds (or 67%). This is how much you might need to live off when you retire, or 'Get Later' in our calculator. Remember we show these numbers on a monthly basis.

If you think you will need more or less than this amount, you can edit the amount you 'Get Later' in the Advanced Calculator. This will change the amount you need to 'Save Now' to reach your goal.

The calculator is a simple illustration of how much you might need to save today to get a pension pot that could give you enough to live comfortably when you retire. It is based on a set of widely used assumptions (see below) that are not specific to individual circumstances, so should only be used to give a broad indication of a sensible amount to save.

The calculator uses your age and current earnings to estimate what you might be earning when you reach state retirement age, assuming your earnings increase with inflation (2.5%) between now and then.

It then calculates what size pension pot you would need to give you an income of 2/3rds that amount when you retire. This assumes you can generate an income from your pension equal to 4% of your total pot, and you top this up with the State Pension (currently around £760 per month).

Finally, we calculate how much you would need to save each month between now and then to get a pension pot that size, assuming:

• You get government tax relief on all your contributions and this is added into the pension
• Your savings will grow by about 5% each year after deducting all fees (through investment returns)
• You increase the amount you save each by 2.5% each year (to keep up with inflation)

After that, the Advanced Calculator works out how much you would you need to 'ramp-up' your savings over time if you started with a lower savings amount today, or if you wanted a different amount in the future.

All numbers are shown in today's money, which means what things cost today (see separate FAQ).

The State Pension is the money the government currently gives each year to people over 'State Pension Age', which is between 65 and 68 depending on when you were born (for anyone born after 1978 it is 68).

The full State Pension amount is about £9k a year, but you only receive the full amount if you have paid National Insurance for 35 years.

You need to have paid National Insurance for at least 10 years to get any State Pension. You'll get a proportion of the State Pension if you have paid National Insurance for between 10 and 35 years.

We include the full State Pension in our calculations.

To make things simple, all the numbers we show you are in “today’s money”. This means they are based on what money is worth & what things cost today.

In real life, things get more expensive every year as you get older (by about 2-3% per year) due to inflation. However it's difficult to predict how much things will cost by the time you retire, and therefore how much you will need saved up.

So, when you are thinking about how much money you need when you retire, just think about how much bills, shopping, holidays, school fees, socialising, all cost today, and therefore how much you would need to cover those expenses.

Our calculator then works out the real cost in the future and the real amount you would need saved up, but then shows you the total in terms of today's money.

Penfold is a really simple, low cost and flexible pension that you can set up in less than 5 minutes. You can pause or change the amount you are saving at any time, and we will claim your 25% government top-ups for you. We will even combine any old pension pots into one place for you. You can view and manage your pension at any time online or with our app.