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Fee-only fiduciary · Boston · est. 1998 Client portal login

Cornerstone Capital
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The readiness check

Your retirement, in honest ranges

Five inputs, real compound arithmetic, and three disciplined scenarios instead of one flattering line. Everything is translated into today's dollars, because a number thirty years out means nothing until it is.

45
65

We'll keep this at least a year past your current age — time travel is outside our practice areas.

Everything earmarked for retirement: 401(k)s, IRAs, taxable investments. Not your house.

Include employer matching — it compounds just the same.

In today's dollars — what your life costs now, adjusted for how you'd actually live. The 4% guideline turns this into a target nest egg.

The assumptions behind the arithmetic
  • Returns are compounded monthly, contributions added monthly
  • Scenario bands (nominal, before fees and taxes) 4% · 6% · 8%
  • Long-run inflation used for today's-dollars figures 2.5%
  • Sustainable-income guideline (the “25× rule”) 4%/yr
  • Social Security, pensions, and home equity Not included

Deliberately simple, deliberately visible. A full plan also models taxes, Social Security timing, sequence-of-returns risk, and spending that changes with age — that's the part that takes a planner rather than a page of JavaScript.

Your target

Nest egg for $6,000/month of spending $1,800,000

In today's dollars · 20 years until your target date

Cautious 4%/yr

4% — bond-heavy, or an unlucky sequence of decades

Projected $1,328,066

Today's dollars $810,480

Income/mo $2,702

45% of target

Balanced 6%/yr

6% — a diversified middle path

Projected $1,851,633

Today's dollars $1,129,998

Income/mo $3,767

63% of target

Growth 8%/yr

8% — equity-heavy, and patient through drawdowns

Projected $2,607,912

Today's dollars $1,591,533

Income/mo $5,305

88% of target

On the balanced path you'd land around 63% of target. Closing the gap from here is a solvable, ordinary planning problem — not a crisis.

    Projections aren't promises

    These are hypothetical illustrations, not predictions or guarantees — real markets deliver returns in a jagged, inconvenient order, and inflation won't politely hold at 2.5%. That's exactly why we show a band instead of a line. Figures are before fees and taxes; investing involves risk, including loss of principal.

    Talk through your numbers — free

    Sample-site demo — the calculator runs entirely in your browser and saves nothing but your inputs, locally.

    The first step is free

    The calculator finds the gap. Planning closes it.

    Forty-five minutes with a fiduciary turns these ranges into decisions: what to save, where to hold it, and when the date can safely move.

    Schedule an introduction Check your readiness first
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