The calculator
At 4.0%, a $1,000,000 portfolio supports a first-year withdrawal of $40,000. Going the other way, $50,000 a year requires $1,250,000.
Pre-tax and computed in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
What a withdrawal rate actually means
A 4% withdrawal rate does not mean withdrawing 4% of the current balance each year. It means withdrawing 4% of the starting balance in year one, then increasing that dollar amount with inflation regardless of what markets do. That distinction is the whole source of the risk: after a 30% fall, your unchanged withdrawal is now 5.7% of what is left.
Withdrawing a constant percentage of the current balance is a different policy entirely — one that can never exhaust the portfolio but makes your income swing with the market. Both are legitimate; they simply move the risk between your portfolio and your lifestyle. The safe withdrawal rate entry covers the distinction, and withdrawal strategies covers the five rules Killion models.
Why fees come straight off the rate
A portfolio funding both you and a manager has to produce both. The fee is charged on the balance every year, so to a first approximation it reduces the rate you can sustainably take by the size of the fee: a 4% plan with a 1% annual fee behaves like a 3% plan.
Try entering 1% in the fee field. On a $1,000,000 portfolio that is $10,000 a year, every year, in good markets and bad. The investment fee calculator shows what that compounds to over a full accumulation period.
Where a single rate stops being useful
A withdrawal rate is a summary statistic, and it hides the two things that determine whether a plan survives: the order returns arrive in, and whether your spending can flex.
We ran flexible and rigid withdrawal policies through 5,000 identical market lifetimes. The flexible 4% policy lasted in every single run; the rigid 4% policy failed in 1.1% of them. Same rate, same markets, different policy — and the difference came from being able to spend less after bad years. The full results are in our study of the 4% rule.
Horizon matters just as much. The 4% figure came from 30-year windows. If you are planning for forty or fifty years, test that horizon rather than borrowing a number built for a shorter one.