Retirement Calculator

How this is worked out

The balance is built month by month rather than year by year, because contributions arrive with each pay cycle and annual compounding of a monthly contribution overstates the result by roughly half a year of growth.

Each contribution goes in at the start of the month and earns that month's return — an annuity-due, which is how a payroll contribution behaves. The monthly rate is the twelfth root of the annual one:

monthly rate = (1 + annual return − fees)^1/12 − 1

Then the step most super projections skip. A balance in 2056 is not spendable in units anyone understands, so it is divided back:

today's dollars = balance ÷ (1 + inflation)^years

At 2.5% over 30 years that divisor is about 2.1, which is why the page leads with $834,351 and puts $1,750,107 on the line beneath. ASIC's Moneysmart projections are inflation-adjusted for the same reason, and it is why a super fund's own statement usually shows a lower figure than a website does.

Two Australian details the arithmetic does not apply for you. Employer and salary-sacrificed contributions are concessional and are taxed at 15% inside the fund on the way in — so entering your employer's gross 12% contribution overstates what lands in the account by that much. And returns quoted by funds are usually net of investment fees and tax already, so entering a fund's advertised return alongside a fee figure double-counts. The charge field is there for administration fees and for comparing one fee level against another.

The income the balance supports is solved rather than assumed: bisection finds the first-year drawdown that lasts the years you entered while rising with inflation, and reports what percentage of the balance that turned out to be.

A worked example

Your employer is already paying 12%

The super guarantee is 12% of ordinary time earnings in 2026-27, having finished its long climb from 9%. It is compulsory, it is paid on top of your wage rather than out of it, and it is the reason Australian retirement arithmetic starts from a much stronger base than the American or British equivalent. In the worked example above the employer contributes $438,135 over thirty years and the member $97,363.

From 01/07/2026 the guarantee is worked out and paid on each pay cycle's qualifying earnings rather than quarterly. The practical effect is that contributions reach the fund sooner and compound for longer, and that unpaid super becomes visible within weeks instead of months. Unpaid super has historically been one of the largest sources of retirement shortfall in Australia and is worth checking against payslips through myGov rather than assumed.

The other thing worth checking is how many accounts you have. Multiple accounts from multiple jobs each charge their own administration fee and often each carry their own insurance premiums, drawn from the balance. Stapling — where your existing fund follows you to a new employer by default — largely stopped new duplicates being created, but it did nothing about the ones opened before it.

Concessional and non-concessional are taxed at opposite ends

Concessional contributions — the guarantee, salary sacrifice, and personal contributions you claim a deduction for — are taxed at 15% going into the fund, and share a cap of $32,500 for 2026-27. For anyone whose marginal rate is above 15%, that is the entire point: income taxed at 32% or 45% is instead taxed at 15%.

Non-concessional contributions are made from money already taxed, are not taxed again on the way in, and have their own cap of $130,000 — four times the concessional cap. Because that money has already been taxed, it forms a tax-free component that is not taxed on withdrawal or on death to a non-dependant, which is a distinction that matters more than it sounds.

Unused concessional cap can be carried forward for five years if your total super balance was under $500,000 at the previous 30 June, which is what makes a large one-off contribution possible in a year with a capital gain or a redundancy payment. Exceeding the concessional cap is not catastrophic — the excess is added to your assessable income and taxed at your marginal rate with a 15% offset for the tax the fund already paid — but it undoes the benefit entirely.

Salary sacrifice and the bring-forward rule

Salary sacrifice redirects gross pay into super before income tax, so the contribution is taxed at 15% inside the fund rather than at your marginal rate. On a marginal rate of 32%, sacrificing $1,000 puts $850 into super instead of leaving $680 in your account — a 25% uplift on the same money, before any return.

It shares the concessional cap with the guarantee, which is the constraint people hit without noticing: an employer paying 12% on a salary of $271,000 has already used the whole $32,500 cap before any sacrifice at all. The calculator above warns when the two figures you enter add to more than the cap, and does not stop you modelling it.

The bring-forward rule works on the non-concessional side and is assessed on your total super balance at the previous 30 June. Under $1.84 million you can bring forward 3 years and contribute up to $390,000 in one go; under $1.97 million it is 2 years and $260,000; under $2.10 million, the standard $130,000; at or above that, nil. It is the mechanism behind the common pattern of selling an asset near retirement and moving the proceeds inside super.

Preservation age 60, and the Age Pension is a separate question

Preservation age is 60 for everyone born after 30 June 1964, so the old sliding scale no longer applies to anyone still working. Reaching it does not by itself release the money: you generally need to have retired, or be over 65, or start a transition-to-retirement income stream, which allows a limited drawdown while still working.

From 60, withdrawals from a taxed fund are generally tax-free, and earnings inside a retirement-phase pension are untaxed up to the transfer balance cap — $2.1 million for 2026-27. Amounts above the cap stay in accumulation phase, where earnings are taxed at 15%. That cap is indexed and applies to the amount moved into the pension, not to what it later grows to.

The Age Pension is a different test at a different age, and it is means-tested on both income and assets with the lower of the two results applying. Super counts as an asset once you reach Age Pension age, and the assets test taper means each extra dollar of assets above the threshold reduces the pension at a defined rate. That interaction produces a band in which additional super delivers less than its face value in retirement income — this calculator projects a balance and a drawdown, and does not model either test.

Assumptions and sources

Super guarantee

ATO "Super guarantee" — 12% for 2026-27; Payday Super applies from 2026-07-01. checked 2026-08-24

Contributions caps

ATO "Contributions caps" — concessional $32,500, non-concessional $130,000 for 2026-27. checked 2026-08-24

Bring-forward and transfer balance cap

ATO — bring-forward up to $390,000 over 3 years by total super balance; transfer balance cap $2,100,000. The ATO contributions-caps page still carried a superseded transfer balance figure when checked, so the dedicated page was taken as authoritative. checked 2026-08-24

The arithmetic

Monthly annuity-due accumulation, inflation-adjusted, sustainable drawdown solved by bisection. The 15% contributions tax is not deducted from the figures you enter — enter what reaches the fund. Preservation age 60 for anyone born after 30 June 1964.