Blog · Pension drawdown
How long will my pension last?
The honest answer is a table, not a number. Here is how long every pot size lasts at every spending level, and the point where a pot stops running out at all.
The short answer
It depends on the pot, your monthly spending, and when the State Pension starts - in that order of surprise. A £300,000 pot supporting £2,000 a month from 60 lasts to about 84, with a full State Pension joining at 67. Spend £1,500 instead and the same pot never runs out. Spend £2,500 and it is gone by 74.
- how long £300,000 lasts at £2,000 a month from 60
- Age 84
- the spending below which £300,000 never runs out
- £1,564 a month
- what the State Pension adds to that same pot
- 10 extra years
- how long £400,000 lasts at the same £2,000 a month
- Age 100
How long a pension pot actually lasts
Retiring at 60 with a full State Pension from 67, a £300,000 pot supporting £2,000 a month in today's money lasts to about age 84. Change the pot or the spending and the answer moves fast, so here it is for every combination.
| Pot at 60 | £1,500 a month | £2,000 a month | £2,500 a month | £3,000 a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £100,000 | Age 65 | Age 64 | Age 63 | Age 62 |
| £200,000 | Age 88 | Age 71 | Age 67 | Age 65 |
| £300,000 | Never runs out | Age 84 | Age 74 | Age 70 |
| £400,000 | Never runs out | Age 100 | Age 82 | Age 75 |
| £500,000 | Never runs out | Never runs out | Age 92 | Age 82 |
| £750,000 | Never runs out | Never runs out | Never runs out | Age 102 |
Balanced assumptions: 5% growth, 2.5% inflation, 0.4% fees. Spending is in today's money and rises with inflation each year. A full State Pension of £12,548 a year joins at 67. "Never runs out" means growth plus the State Pension covers the withdrawals indefinitely.
Read along any row and the same pot produces wildly different answers. £300,000 lasts to beyond any age worth planning for at £1,500 a month, to 84 at £2,000, and only to 74 at £2,500. For scale, the PLSA puts a moderate retirement for one person at £2,725 a month - spending at that level, £300,000 is exhausted at 72. What each lifestyle costs, and the pot behind it, is the subject of How much do you actually need to retire in the UK?
The same £300,000 lasts to 74, to 84, or forever - decided entirely by £1,000 a month of spending.
That sensitivity is the single most useful thing to know about drawdown. The pot is fixed by the time you retire. The spending is not, and small changes to it move the depletion age by years, not months.
The State Pension does more of the work than the pot
Run the same £300,000 at £2,000 a month with no State Pension at all and it is gone at 74 instead of 84 - 10 of those years belong to the £241-a-week State Pension, not to the pot.
The mechanics are simple. From 60 to 67 the pot pays for everything: £2,000 a month, £168,000 across the 7 bridge years, which is why £300,000 is down to about £165,233 by 67. Then the State Pension arrives - £241.30 a week in 2026/27, £12,548 a year - and the pot's job shrinks to the £954 a month it does not cover. A pot that reaches your State Pension age with money left suddenly drains far more slowly.
This is also why "running out" is not the cliff it sounds like. If the pot is exhausted at 84, the State Pension keeps paying £12,548 a year for life - close to the PLSA's minimum living standard on its own, and Pension Credit tops up the lowest incomes. Running out means dropping to the floor, not falling through it. It is still not a plan, but it is worth knowing what the floor is.
Check your own State Pension age and forecast
Everything here assumes a full State Pension from 67. Your age may be 67 or 68 depending on when you were born, and your amount depends on your National Insurance record - both are free to check on gov.uk. On 30 qualifying years instead of 35, this pot runs out at 81 rather than 84.
The spending level where a pot never runs out
Every pot has a spending level below which it is never exhausted, because growth plus the State Pension covers the withdrawals. For £300,000 that level is about £1,564 a month.
| Pot at 60 | Never runs out below | Spend-to-95 level |
|---|---|---|
| £100,000 | £1,088 a month | £1,105 a month |
| £200,000 | £1,326 a month | £1,438 a month |
| £300,000 | £1,564 a month | £1,770 a month |
| £400,000 | £1,802 a month | £2,102 a month |
| £500,000 | £2,039 a month | £2,435 a month |
| £750,000 | £2,634 a month | £3,266 a month |
Balanced assumptions, full State Pension from 67, today's money. The spend-to-95 level uses the whole pot by age 95 and leaves nothing behind.
The two columns are two different retirements. Spend below the first and the pot behaves like an endowment - your income is secure at any age and there is an inheritance at the end. Spend at the second and you get £206 a month more lifestyle from the same £300,000, in exchange for the pot finishing around your ninety-fifth birthday.
Most people should plan between the two. The first column is the price of absolute safety, and for many pots it is a noticeably smaller life than the money can support. The second column has no margin for living past 95. Where you sit between them is a judgement about longevity, inheritance and nerve - which is exactly why seeing both numbers beats being handed one.
Retiring later stretches the same pot by years
Start the same £300,000 at £2,000 a month from 65 instead of 60 and it lasts to 97 instead of 84. Every year you wait works on both sides of the ledger at once.
| You start at | Pot runs out at | Bridge years |
|---|---|---|
| Age 55 | Age 72 | 12 |
| Age 60 | Age 84 | 7 |
| Age 62 | Age 89 | 5 |
| Age 65 | Age 97 | 2 |
| Age 67 | Age 104 | 0 |
Balanced assumptions, full State Pension from 67. Bridge years are the years the pot carries everything with no State Pension alongside it.
A year of waiting is a year of growth the pot keeps, a year of spending it never pays, and a year closer to the State Pension sharing the load. That is why the gap between starting at 55 and starting at 67 is 32 years of pot life, not 12. The same trade seen from the other end - the pot you would need to stop at each age - is the subject of Can I retire at 60 in the UK?
See your own depletion age
Your pot is not exactly £300,000 and your spending is not exactly £2,000. Put your own numbers in and watch the year it runs out move as you drag the spending.
How long will your pension last?
Prefilled with the £300,000 pot and £2,000 a month from this article. The depletion age, not the monthly figure, is the number to watch - if it lands before 90, something in the plan needs to change.
Your numbers
Still building the pot? Work backwards from spending to the age you could afford to stop.
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The 4% rule answers a different question
The 4% rule says £300,000 supports £12,000 a year, or £1,000 a month. Our never-runs-out level for the same pot is £1,564 a month. Both are right, about different things.
The 4% rule comes from US research into portfolios that had to survive any 30-year window on their own. It ignores the State Pension entirely, which for a UK retiree is £12,548 a year of inflation-linked income the pot never has to produce. Add it back and the same "never run out" test clears at £1,564 a month rather than £1,000 - the difference between a minimum retirement and a nearly moderate one on the same £300,000.
Use the 4% figure if you want a rule that survives bad decades with no State Pension in the maths, and treat our figure as what the same caution looks like once the UK's actual pension system is included. What you should not do is apply the 4% rule to a UK pot, find it wanting, and conclude you can never retire.
How much the growth assumption moves it
Every depletion age in this article rests on a guess about markets. The honest thing is to show how much the guess matters.
| Scenario | Growth before inflation | Pot runs out at |
|---|---|---|
| Cautious | 3% | Age 78 |
| Balanced | 5% | Age 84 |
| Adventurous | 7% | Age 96 |
All three assume 2.5% inflation and 0.4% fees, drawing from 60 with a full State Pension from 67.
That is an 18-year spread on the same pot and the same spending, decided by something nobody controls. Plan on the balanced row, but check the cautious one: if your spending only works in the adventurous row, it is a hope rather than a plan.
Everything here is in today's money
We subtract inflation from growth, so £2,000 a month means the lifestyle £2,000 buys right now, in every year of the plan. The amount you actually withdraw rises each year to keep pace, and the depletion ages already account for that.
Six ways to make the same pot last longer
The pot is hard to change by the time you retire. These levers are not, and each one is quantified against the £300,000-at-£2,000 baseline that runs out at 84.
- Spend £200 a month less: 9 more yearsCutting spending from £2,000 to £1,800 moves the depletion age from 84 to 93. Spending is the most powerful dial on this page, and it works in both directions - £200 a month more takes years off just as quickly.
- Start at 65 instead of 60: from 84 to 97Five more working years is 13 more years of pot life, because the pot grows longer, pays out for less time, and the bridge to the State Pension shrinks from 7 years to 2. Even one or two years moves the answer visibly - the table above has the full set.
- Keep some income coming in: it can switch depletion offAny income is spending the pot never funds. With £500 a month from consultancy, part-time work or a lodger, this pot goes from running out at 84 to never running out at all, because the net draw falls below the level growth can sustain.
- Clear housing costs before you stopThe PLSA living standards all assume no rent and no mortgage, and the reason is on this page: every £300 a month of housing works exactly like the spending lever, in the wrong direction. Downsizing or clearing a mortgage before retiring moves your depletion age more reliably than any investment choice.
- Fill the gaps in your National Insurance record: 3 years of pot lifeOn 30 qualifying years instead of 35, the State Pension covers less, the pot covers more, and it runs out at 81 instead of 84. Voluntary contributions to fill missing years are often the cheapest retirement income you will ever buy - check your record free on gov.uk.
- Cut your feesWe assume 0.4% a year. At 1% the same pot at the same spending runs out at 82 instead of 84 - 2 years of retirement handed over in charges. It is one of the few levers you can pull this afternoon and never think about again.
What this calculation leaves out
Four things could move your own answer materially, and none of them are in the tables above.
- Tax. Usually 25% of a pension can be taken tax free and the rest is taxed as income when you draw it. Treat the spending levels here as after-tax: if most of your £2,000 a month comes from taxable withdrawals rather than ISAs, the pot funds roughly 10 to 15% more than the spending figure, and runs out sooner than the table shows.
- The order returns arrive in. A depletion age of 84 assumes steady growth. A bad first five years does far more damage than the same five years at 80, because you sell investments to live on while they are cheap. Holding one to two years of spending in cash is the usual defence.
- Care costs. Later-life care can consume a pot this size on its own, and no row in any table here includes it.
- Access. The normal minimum pension age is 55, rising to 57 on 6 April 2028. Drawing from 60 is fine; anyone planning to start earlier needs ISAs or other savings for the first years.
An annuity is the other honest answer to this article's question: hand over some or all of the pot and the income lasts exactly as long as you do, by construction. Rates improve with age, so drawdown first and an annuity in your seventies is a common middle path. The tables here are the drawdown half of that decision.
How to check your own numbers
Step 1
Add up every pot you have
Old workplace pensions, the current one, SIPPs and ISAs. Defined benefit pensions are different - treat their income like a second State Pension and subtract it from your spending rather than adding it to the pot.
Step 2
Get your State Pension forecast
Free on gov.uk, and worth doing before anything else on this list - the gap between a full record and 30 qualifying years is 3 years of pot life on the baseline above.
Step 3
Run your real budget, housing included
Put your pot and honest monthly spending into the drawdown calculator and read the depletion age. If it lands before 90, work the levers above until it does not - starting with spending, because it is the one you control completely.
Frequently asked questions
How long will my pension last?
It depends on the pot, your spending and the State Pension. Drawing from 60 with a full State Pension from 67: £300,000 lasts to about 84 at £2,000 a month, £500,000 lasts to age 92 at £2,500 a month, and any pot never runs out below its sustainable level - about £1,564 a month for £300,000.
How long will £100,000 last in retirement?
At £1,500 a month from 60 it is gone by 65 - before the State Pension even starts. At £1,200 it lasts to 71, and below about £1,088 a month it never runs out. £100,000 works best as a top-up to the State Pension rather than a bridge to it.
How long will £200,000 last in retirement?
From 60 with a full State Pension from 67: to 88 at £1,500 a month, to 71 at £2,000, and to 67 at £2,500. Below about £1,326 a month it is never exhausted.
How long will £300,000 last in retirement?
From 60: to beyond 100 at £1,500 a month, to 84 at £2,000, and to 74 at £2,500, with a full State Pension from 67 doing a surprising share of the work. Below about £1,564 a month it never runs out at all.
How long will £400,000 last in retirement?
From 60 with a full State Pension from 67: to 100 at £2,000 a month, to 82 at £2,500, and to 75 at £3,000. Below about £1,802 a month it is never exhausted.
How long will £500,000 last in retirement?
At £2,000 a month from 60 it never runs out; at £2,500 it lasts to 92, and at £3,000 to 82. We look at that pot in detail in Is £500,000 enough to retire on?
What happens if my pension pot runs out?
The State Pension keeps paying for life - £241.30 a week in 2026/27, £12,548 a year - and Pension Credit tops up the lowest incomes. That is close to the PLSA's minimum living standard, so running out means dropping to a hard floor rather than to nothing. It is a poor plan, but it is not a cliff edge.
What is a safe withdrawal rate in the UK?
The classic answer is 4% of the pot a year - £1,000 a month on £300,000 - but that rule ignores the State Pension. Including a full State Pension from 67, the spending a £300,000 pot can sustain indefinitely from 60 is about £1,564 a month on balanced assumptions. The safe rate is personal: it depends on your State Pension age, your record and when you start.
Does the State Pension change how long my pension lasts?
More than almost anything else. £300,000 at £2,000 a month lasts to 74 with no State Pension and to 84 with a full one from 67 - 10 extra years from £12,548 a year of income the pot does not have to produce. A gappy National Insurance record shortens your pot's life the same way in miniature.
Should I buy an annuity instead of drawdown?
An annuity converts the pot into income that lasts exactly as long as you do, which makes "how long will it last" someone else's problem. The price is flexibility and inheritance: the money is spent, and the income usually dies with you unless you buy protections. Many people run drawdown through their sixties and buy an annuity later, when rates are better and the remaining horizon is shorter.
Do these figures account for inflation?
Yes. Every figure is in today's money: we subtract inflation from growth, so £2,000 a month means the lifestyle £2,000 buys today, in every year of the plan. The amount you actually withdraw rises each year to keep pace, and the depletion ages already reflect that.
Sources
- The new State Pension: what you'll get · GOV.UK
- Check your State Pension forecast · GOV.UK
- Plan your retirement income · GOV.UK
- Retirement Living Standards · Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association
Keep going
This article is guidance, not financial advice. Every figure is produced by the same engine that powers our free calculators, stated in today's money on the assumptions named above, and checked against 2026/27 rates. Your own position will differ - if a decision this size is close, speak to a regulated financial adviser.