Retirement calculators, as the name suggests, help estimate how much you need to save to live out your retirement with rudimentary comfort. Retirement calculators collect a percentage of your salary until the age you retire. A simple retirement calculator projects how much you need to save and how long you need to save to avail yourself of a certain level of expenditure post-retirement.

Those retirement calculators that are suited for safe investments have a stable, fixed rate of return. Some configure market volatility into the calculation and project amounts that will outlast the retiree. Retirement calculators differ from each other in the taxes they take, the pensions and social security they take into account, and other sources that affect finances going in or out of the account.

Naturally, many assumptions go into the calculation of your retirement income. One is the rate of investment return. Or, to be precise, the real investment return which is the amount post inflation. There are retirement calculators that calculate the expenses post-retirement that a portfolio of bonds linked with inflation would be able to sustain.

There are many a great and simple retirement calculator online that can help you determine how much and how long you need to invest in your retirement fund. Retirement calculators are very helpful, but there’s also a simple calculation you can do to have a rough estimate of the amount you need to save.

Here are some of the best simple retirement calculators available today:

• Ultimate Retirement Calculator, called so because it can do everything that the rest of the calculators don’t. It is a reflection of today’s method of retirement planning where people supplement their retirement income with various other sources that include real estate, consulting, or business. You are allowed to supplement your retirement income with at least three different sources of income along with one lump sum of money. This could be something like income from selling a house. All this calls for some complex calculations to estimate the retirement income that other calculators cannot do.
• Retirement Withdrawal Calculator, which, as the name suggests, helps you calculate how much you can withdraw on a monthly basis, both before and after inflation, with the savings you have so far.
• Simple Retirement Savings Calculator, which calculates how long it will take to reach your goal of a particular savings amount by factoring in three things: the amount you have saved right now, the amount you will add to your savings each month and the estimated interest rate, annually. It solves the time it will take to arrive at your retirement goal by keeping the amount saved each month a constant.
• Retirement Investment Calculator, which figures out the amount you would need to invest each month to reach the goal you have in mind within a given time.
• Millionaire Calculator, which is a fun calculator that will calculate the number of years it will take for someone to save a million dollars based on their current savings amount and future deposits.
• 401(k) Calculator, which helps you figure out the growth of compound interest and the future value of contributions that you will make monthly. The process is a simple one, so do not be taken in by the more complex 410(k) calculators that promise to compute in more variables. The more complex the calculator, in the case of 401(k), the less accurate it could be. For instance, calculators that compute in your salary growth often fail to take into account the rate of inflation. All you need to do is calculate your starting balance, an estimate of all the contributions to be made to the account like yours, your employer’s, and catch up contributions, figure out the return of investment, and, finally, the number of years to retirement. Once you enter all these, you just have to click on the calculate button.
• 401(k) Early Withdrawal Calculator, which compares the significance of taking a significant amount of money via 401(K) or your IRA to circulating the money through an account that is tax-deferred by keying in factors like withdrawal penalties and tax effects.
• Taxable vs. Tax Deferred Investment Growth Calculator, which compares the value of your savings in the future and the differences in investment returns between investments that are taxable and those that are not.
• Interest Calculator – Simple & Compound Interest, which calculates monthly payment incomes that have an interest in them and the monthly compound growth.
• Roth IRA Calculator, which calculates the tax differences in maintaining a traditional IRA account and converting it into a Roth IRA.
• Present Value of Annuity Calculator, which calculates the current value of a set of cash flows that are to be received in the future in equal amounts.