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There's no employer 401(k) match coming to rescue your retirement when you work for yourself — just you, an account you opened, and the years you let it compound. This projects what your savings could grow into, splits out how much is your money versus pure growth, and translates the future figure back into today's dollars so you can plan against a real number.
Nothing you type leaves your browser. Projections use the return you choose and are estimates, not guarantees — markets fluctuate. This is general guidance, not financial advice; talk to a fiduciary planner about your situation.
An employee with a 401(k) gets two things working quietly in their favor: an automatic payroll deduction they never have to think about, and an employer match that's effectively free money on top. A freelancer gets neither. No one withholds a contribution from your invoices, no one matches a dollar of it, and there's no default plan you were enrolled in on day one. Every dollar that ends up in your retirement account is a dollar you deliberately moved there.
That's the bad news. The good news is that the self-employed have access to accounts with far higher contribution ceilings than a standard workplace plan — a SEP-IRA or a Solo 401(k) can absorb tens of thousands of dollars a year. The math of compounding doesn't care where the money came from; it only cares how much you put in and how long you leave it alone. This calculator shows you exactly what that looks like over the decades you have left.
The engine is the standard future-value formula for compound interest, run monthly. Your existing balance grows on its own, and each monthly contribution is treated as an end-of-month deposit that compounds for the rest of the runway:
The ledger then splits that nest egg into the part you actually contributed versus the part that is pure investment growth — and over a few decades, growth usually dwarfs contributions. That gap is the reason to start now rather than later: the earliest dollars compound the longest.
A seven-figure projection looks enormous, but a dollar in 2056 won't buy what a dollar buys today. That's why the tool also discounts the nest egg back into today's money using the inflation rate you set. It's not there to discourage you — it's there so you plan against a realistic number. A common shortcut is to skip inflation entirely by entering a real (after-inflation) return of around 7% and leaving inflation at 0%; then the headline figure is already in today's dollars.
The last ledger applies the well-known "4% rule" — a rule of thumb from the Trinity study suggesting that withdrawing about 4% of a balanced portfolio in the first year of retirement (then adjusting for inflation) has historically lasted roughly 30 years. It's an estimate, not a law, and many planners now treat it as a starting point rather than a guarantee. Still, it's a useful gut check: it turns an abstract balance into "this is roughly what it could pay me each month."
There's no single right answer — it depends on how your savings are invested and the decades ahead, neither of which anyone can predict. As a reference point, a diversified, stock-heavy portfolio has historically returned around 10% per year before inflation and roughly 7% after. Conservative planning often uses 5–6%. The honest move is to try a couple of rates and see how sensitive your result is, rather than banking on the optimistic one.
Far more than a typical workplace plan allows. A SEP-IRA or Solo 401(k) can let the self-employed set aside tens of thousands of dollars a year, well above the standard IRA limit. The exact ceiling depends on your net profit and which account you use — our SEP-IRA vs Solo 401(k) calculator works out your specific maximum, which you can then plug in here as a monthly amount.
That's compounding doing its job. Each dollar you contribute earns a return, then those returns earn returns, and so on for every remaining year. Over thirty-plus years the growth portion routinely ends up several times larger than everything you personally put in — which is exactly why starting earlier, even with smaller amounts, beats starting later with larger ones.
No. Every calculation runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent to a server or stored. The link in your address bar updates so you can bookmark or share a scenario, but it only contains the numbers you chose.
Keep going
Find your maximum self-employed contribution, then bring that monthly amount here to see it compound.
See what you actually keep after taxes — the income your retirement contributions come out of.
Build the liquid cushion first, so a slow month never forces you to raid your retirement savings.