Retirement age calculator

How does this retirement age calculator work?

It finds the earliest age at which your savings, contributions and State Pension can fund your monthly spending all the way to 95, with every figure in today's money. Four inputs go in; one age comes out.

Everything is in today's money, so £2,200 a month means what £2,200 buys today, whether you are 34 or 84. That is deliberate: nominal projections produce huge, flattering numbers that quietly mean much less by the time you get there. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing you type reaches our servers. The same engine produces every table and worked example on this page, so the numbers here and the numbers the tool shows can never drift apart.

What does it assume, and why?

Deliberately cautious defaults, every one of them editable under "Adjust assumptions". On Balanced, 5% growth less 2.5% inflation and 0.4% fees leaves a real return of about 2% a year - growth in purchasing power, not the number on a statement.

What is the retirement age in the UK?

For this calculator, your retirement age is the earliest age you can afford to stop work - a sum, not a rule. There is no fixed retirement age in the UK: the default retirement age was abolished in 2011 and you can work as long as you like. Three different ages get called "retirement age", and the calculator above is about the third one.

The first two are dates on a calendar; the third is a sum, and it can land on either side of them. The DWP's latest figures put the average age at which people actually left the labour market in 2026 at 65.8 for men and 65.1 for women, both just short of the current State Pension age of 66 - so many people bridge at least a short gap from their own savings. Your exact State Pension age and the date it starts are in the State Pension age calculator; this page is about whether you can afford to stop before it.

How much do you need to retire at 55, 60, 65 or 67?

It depends almost entirely on your monthly spending and on how many years sit between stopping and your State Pension. On £2,200 a month with a State Pension at 67, retiring at 60 takes about £429,227 in today's money and retiring at 67 about £296,043. The whole grid is below.

Two things stand out. Doubling the spending from £1,500 to £3,000 a month more than doubles the pot at every age, because the State Pension covers a fixed £1,046 a month and everything above it has to come from you. And the cost of stopping early rises steeply: £513,473 at 55 against £296,043 at 67 on the same spending, a difference of £217,430 for 12 extra years of freedom. Our guides to retiring at 55, retiring at 60 and how much you need to retire take each row apart.

What are the bridge years to State Pension age?

The years between the day you retire and the day your State Pension starts, in which every pound you spend comes from your own pot. They are why early retirement costs so much more than it looks, and why most calculators that ignore the State Pension quietly mislead.

Retire at 59 with a State Pension age of 68, as the default saver does, and you have a 9-year bridge. Each of those years costs a full £26,400 of spending from the pot; once the State Pension arrives it covers £1,046 a month of the load and withdrawals fall by that amount for the rest of your life. That is why the chart falls steeply and then flattens.

One extra year of early retirement does not cost one year of spending. It costs a year of spending, plus a year of missed contributions, plus a year of missed growth, all at the most expensive end of the plan.

In pounds, with a State Pension at 67 as in the table above: on £2,200 a month, stopping at 59 rather than 60 raises the pot you need on the day by about £17,536 rather than £26,400, because the pot earns a year of growth that covers the rest. The saver's cost is larger than the target's rise: on top of it you give up a year of contributions and a year of growth on them, which is why the answer moves further than the target does. It is also why the reverse is such good news: each year you keep working typically moves the answer by more than a year of saving alone would suggest.

How much do you need to save a month to retire early?

Take the default saver and change one thing at a time. Saving £500 a month instead of £850 pushes the answer from 59 to 63; saving £2,000 brings it forward to 51.

Notice that the pot on the day gets larger as the age gets earlier. Stopping sooner means more bridge years to fund, so the target moves as well as the date. Time is the other lever: the same £850 a month started at different ages gives very different answers.

Start from nothing at 25 and £850 a month retires you at 58; start at 45 and the same saving reaches 68, the State Pension age itself. Compounding is the difference, and the compound interest calculator shows it directly. If £850 a month sounds like a lot, the disposable income calculator works out what your salary really has room for, and an employer match means each pound you save is worth two before any growth.

Worked examples: when could you retire?

Three savers, run through the same engine as the calculator above. Set the same four inputs and you will see the same chart.

How can you retire earlier?

Spend less, save more, find some other income, cut fees, fill your National Insurance record and know your State Pension age. Five of the six are priced below against the default saver's age 59; spending is the most powerful and the least discussed, and fees are the cheapest to pull.

1. 1Spend £200 a month less in retirement: stop at 57Every £100 a month trimmed from the target removes £1,200 a year from every bridge year and from every year after, so pound for pound it moves the answer further than saving does. Clearing the mortgage before you stop is the usual way to find it.
2. 2Save £150 a month more: stop at 58Especially anything with an employer match, which is an instant, guaranteed return no market offers. The disposable income calculator shows how much room your salary really has, and our guide explains every line of it.
3. 3Add £500 a month of other income in retirement: stop at 54A defined benefit pension from an old job, a rental, or a day a week of work. Enter it under "Adjust assumptions" and it does the State Pension's job from day one, which is why it moves the answer so far.
4. 4Cut fees from 1% to 0.4%: 61 becomes 59Moving an old workplace pension from 1% to a low-cost fund costs nothing in lifestyle and compounds for decades. Two years of retirement for an afternoon's paperwork is the best trade on this list.
5. 5Fill gaps in your National Insurance record: 30 years instead of 35 costs a yearOn 30 qualifying years the default saver stops at 60 rather than 59, because each missing year costs about £359 a year of State Pension for life. Voluntary contributions are usually the cheapest income you will ever buy; the State Pension age calculator prices your record and the date it starts.
6. 6Check your State Pension age rather than guessing itYou cannot choose it, but it sets the length of the bridge. For the default saver a State Pension at 67 rather than 68 shortens the bridge by a year without moving the 59; for someone whose plan only just works, a year of bridge is the difference. The State Pension age calculator gives the exact date from your date of birth, and the third State Pension age review may yet move it.

Which growth rate should you assume?

Assume Balanced, and check that the plan still works on Cautious. Nobody knows the future, so the calculator gives you three scenarios and the truthful answer is the range: for the default saver 52 to 67, 15 years decided by something nobody controls.

The useful test is whether the plan works on Cautious. If it only works on Adventurous it is a hope rather than a plan; if it works on Cautious it is robust, and Balanced is the upside. The spread also narrows as you get closer: Marcus, at 55, sees 3 years between Cautious and Balanced where Sam sees 8, because there is less time for compounding to diverge.

The ONS puts life expectancy at 65 at 21.2 more years for a woman and 18.7 for a man (2022 to 2024) - to about 86 and 84. Those are averages, so half of us outlive them. Planning to 95 rather than 85 costs the default saver 2 years of retirement, which is the price of not being on the wrong side of the average. If the pot still holds money at 95, the age shown is conservative rather than optimistic.

Can you actually take your pension at the age shown?

Not always from a pension. The normal minimum pension age is 55 today and rises to 57 on 6 April 2028, and the State Pension comes later still. If the calculator shows an age below your pension access age, the early years have to come from ISAs or other savings you can reach at any age.

The maths of when you can afford to stop working is the same either way; what changes is which wrapper the first years' money has to sit in. Anyone born after 5 April 1973 cannot reach 55 before the rise, so a plan to stop at 55 now needs two years funded from outside a pension, and the default saver's 59 needs none. Our guide to SIPP vs ISA for early retirement works out how much of the pot has to be outside a pension for each stopping age, and Can I retire at 55? covers the rules in full.

What this calculator leaves out

It models one person, one pot, one State Pension and steady growth, with spending after tax. Each of these can move the real answer.

• Income tax. Pension withdrawals above the 25% tax-free portion are taxable, and the State Pension is taxable too. Treat your monthly spending as what you need after tax, and if most of it will come from a pension rather than ISAs, add a margin of roughly 10-15% for spending around the basic-rate band.
• Couples. Run it with your combined savings, combined contributions and household spending. Couples typically need well under double a single person's budget, and a household where both partners have full National Insurance records has two State Pensions arriving - enter the second as other monthly income from the date it starts, or the answer will be conservative.
• Defined benefit pensions. Guaranteed income the pot never has to produce. Enter it as other monthly income; do not add a capital value to your savings.
• Sequence of returns. Growth arrives in lumps. A bad stretch just before or after you stop hurts far more than the same stretch at 40 or at 80, which is why a plan that works on Cautious is worth more than one that only works on Balanced.
• Housing and one-off costs. The spending target assumes the home is paid for by the time you stop. A mortgage that runs on, a child's deposit or a new roof at 70 are lump sums the smooth line does not contain.
• Your pot today is probably typical, and that is the point. The ONS's last full breakdown (April 2018 to March 2020) put the median pension of a 55 to 64 year old who has one at £107,300. Against the table above that funds a retirement at State Pension age on a modest budget, not an early one - which is roughly what the DWP's average exit ages show people doing.

How to use the result