How long will my money last?

How the calculator works

The calculator follows your money month by month:

1. At the start of each month you take out what you want to spend. With “Raise the withdrawal with inflation” switched on (the default), that amount rises with prices, so it buys the same every year.
2. If you sell at a gain, the tax is added on top, so the amount you spend is after tax.
3. What stays invested earns the return for the month.
4. A pension or other income you enter reduces the withdrawal from the age it starts.

“How long it lasts” runs until the money is gone. “How much I can take” works backwards and finds the monthly amount that lasts exactly until your chosen age, or that leaves your starting capital intact in today’s money. All results are shown in today’s money.

Example: €500,000 at 60

You are 60 and have €500,000 invested, of which you paid in €350,000. You want €2,000 a month after tax, rising with 2% inflation, and expect a steady 5% return.

The money lasts 27 years, until you are 87. Tax costs €1,219 in the first year; without it the money would last 31 years 11 months.

Turned around: to make it last to 95, you can spend €1,692 a month. To keep the €500,000 in today’s money for your heirs or for a longer life, it is €1,085.

How withdrawals are taxed in Germany

When you sell fund units, only the gain is taxed, not the amount you take out. The calculator uses the average-cost method: the gain share of each sale is 1 − paid in ÷ value. In the example that is 30%.

• Teilfreistellung: 30% of an equity fund’s gain is tax-free, so 21% of each sale is taxable.
• Sparer-Pauschbetrag: the first €1,000 of capital income each year is free (€2,000 for married couples filing jointly). Here that covers the first €4,762 of sales each year.
• Tax rate: the rest pays 26.375%: 25 % Abgeltungsteuer plus 5.5 % solidarity surcharge, without church tax.

As the portfolio grows and you sell, the gain share rises, and so does the tax. German banks don’t use the average, though. The law treats the units you bought first as sold first (first in, first out). Early units usually carry the largest gains, so the tax in the first years can be higher than shown here, and lower later.

The stress test: 1,000 simulated markets

A steady return is a useful average, but no one gets the average every year. With the stress test switched on, the calculator runs your plan through 1,000 market paths. Each month’s return is drawn at random, so that half the paths do better than the steady return and half worse, with the volatility you set (15% a year by default). The paths come from a fixed seed, so the same inputs always give the same result.

In the example, the money lasts to 95 in 35% of paths. In the worst 10 %, it is gone by 76. To hold in 9 out of 10 paths, you could spend €953 a month. The shaded band in the chart shows where the middle 80 % of paths end up.

The order of returns matters as much as their average. A crash early on forces you to sell more units at low prices, and they are missing in the recovery. Switch on “Bad first year: −30 %”: the same plan then lasts only 17 years 1 month.

What is a safe withdrawal rate?

The famous 4 % rule comes from US studies such as the 1998 Trinity study: take 4 % of your starting capital, raise it with inflation, and a mostly-stock portfolio survived 30 years in most historical periods. Those studies used US returns and ignored tax.

In this calculator’s stress test, with a 5% return, 15% volatility and no tax, a portfolio lasts 30 years in 70% of paths at 4 %, 79% at 3.5 % and 88% at 3 %. Zenarios uses 3.5 % as its starting point. If you plan to stop early, read how a Monte Carlo simulation works and why flexible spending rules help.

What it can’t see

It doesn’t know when your bank sells which units, and it leaves out the yearly Vorabpauschale and church tax. Before the statutory pension starts, voluntary members of public health insurance also pay contributions on capital income. Real people cut back after a bad year, which makes money last longer than a fixed withdrawal. And the return model is simple: real markets have fatter tails and inflation shocks. Zenarios runs your whole plan, with tax, pension, health insurance and spending rules, through the same kind of stress test. To find out when you could start withdrawing, try the FIRE calculator.

Common questions

How long will €500,000 last?

Taking €2,000 a month after tax, rising with 2 % inflation, at a steady 5 % return and with €350,000 paid in: about 27 years. Without tax it would be about 32 years; at €1,500 a month about 43 years. In 1,000 simulated markets with 15 % volatility, the €2,000 last 35 years in only about a third of cases.

How much can I withdraw from €500,000?

At a steady 5 % return and 2 % inflation, €1,692 a month after tax, rising with inflation, lasts from 60 to 95. To keep the full capital in today's money, it is €1,085. To hold in 9 out of 10 simulated markets with 15 % volatility, it is €953.

How are withdrawals taxed in Germany?

Only the gain in each sale is taxed. 30 % of an equity fund's gain is tax-free (Teilfreistellung), the first €1,000 of capital income a year is free (€2,000 for married couples), and the rest pays 26.375 % (25 % plus solidarity surcharge, without church tax). With €500,000 of which €350,000 was paid in, €2,000 a month costs about €1,219 in tax in the first year.

What is a safe withdrawal rate?

No rate is safe in every market. A 1998 US study tested 3 to 12 % against returns from 1926 to 1995 and found 3 and 4 % very unlikely to run out in stock-heavy portfolios, before tax. In this calculator's stress test (5 % return, 15 % volatility, no tax), 4 % of the starting capital rising with inflation lasts 30 years in about 70 % of runs, 3.5 % in about 79 % and 3 % in about 88 %.

Why does a bad first year hurt so much?

Because you sell while prices are low, and those units never recover for you. In the example, a −30 % first year shortens the time the money lasts from about 27 to about 17 years, although every later year earns the same return. This is sequence-of-returns risk.

Sources

• § 20 InvStG: Teilfreistellung (30 % for equity funds)
• § 20 EStG: Sparer-Pauschbetrag and first-in, first-out (Abs. 4, 9)
• § 32d EStG: 25 % tax rate on capital income
• § 4 SolZG: solidarity surcharge of 5.5 %
• AAII Journal (1998): Retirement Savings – Choosing a Withdrawal Rate That Is Sustainable

By Constantin Metz, the maker of Zenarios · Reviewed 25 October 2026. Results are estimates from your inputs and simplified rules, not financial, tax or legal advice. How Zenarios calculates