What will retirement cost you?
Before asking whether you'll have "enough," it helps to know what "enough" actually means as a number. The standard shortcut — divide your desired annual spending by a safe withdrawal rate, usually 4% — turns a vague worry into a concrete target you can measure progress against.
The estimate
Pick a retirement age and how much you'd like to spend each year, and see the target nest egg it implies, plus whether your current savings are on pace to get there. To build that spending number up from real categories — phased across retirement, with one-time costs and scenarios like living abroad — use the retirement expense estimator.
To spend $60,000 a year in retirement at a 4% withdrawal rate, the target is a $1,500,000 nest egg by age 65.
Closing that gap over 35 years takes about $673 a month, assuming a 7% return along the way.
No Social Security offset, no inflation adjustment during retirement, and no lifetime depletion simulation — this is a target and a pace check, not a full retirement plan (spec §3.3).
What the model does and doesn't account for
It computes a target as desired spending divided by the safe withdrawal rate, and solves for the monthly savings needed to close the gap between that target and where your current savings alone are projected to land. It does not include Social Security, doesn't adjust for inflation during retirement, and doesn't simulate whether the money actually lasts once you start withdrawing it — that full lifetime question is a bigger tool than a single lesson. See the About & methodology page for more on how these lessons are built.