Retirement Savings
403(b) Calculator
Project your 403(b) balance at retirement from your salary, your contribution rate, your employer's match, and expected investment growth.
Projected balance at retirement
Press project to see the breakdown.
Your contributions — · Employer match — · Investment growth —
How the 403(b) projection works
A 403(b) is the retirement plan offered to teachers, hospital staff, and employees of nonprofits and public organizations. It works much like a 401(k): money comes out of each paycheck before tax, your employer often adds a match, and the whole balance grows tax-deferred until you withdraw it in retirement. This calculator combines those three engines. Your current balance compounds for the full period. Separately, each year's combined contribution, yours plus your employer's, is treated as a deposit that compounds for the years remaining. Add the grown-up deposits to the grown-up starting balance and you get the projected figure at the top, split into what you put in, what your employer put in, and what growth added on top.
The formula behind each piece is the standard future-value calculation. A lump sum grows as balance × (1 + return) raised to the number of years. A steady yearly deposit grows as deposit × [((1 + return)^years − 1) ÷ return]. The split matters more than the total: in a typical 25-year projection, investment growth ends up larger than everything contributed, which is the whole point of starting early. It also shows why the employer match is so valuable. The match is an immediate 100% return on that slice of your pay, before any market growth at all, so contributing at least enough to capture the full match is the closest thing retirement saving has to a guaranteed win.
Practical tips for 403(b) savers
First, never leave match money unclaimed: if your employer matches up to 5% and you contribute 3%, raising your contribution to 5% is effectively a pay rise. Second, small percentage increases compound quietly; many plans let you schedule an automatic 1% rise each year, which most people barely feel in their paycheck. Third, watch the fees on the investment options inside your plan, because a fund charging 1% a year can consume a quarter of your final balance over a career compared with one charging 0.1%. Finally, remember this projection assumes your salary and contribution rate stay flat. If your pay rises and you contribute a percentage of it, your actual contributions will be higher than shown here, so treat the result as a floor based on today's pay rather than a ceiling.
Frequently asked questions
Who can have a 403(b)?
Employees of public schools, hospitals, churches, and tax-exempt nonprofits. If your employer offers one, you are generally eligible to contribute from your first paycheck.
How is a 403(b) different from a 401(k)?
They work almost identically for the saver: pre-tax contributions, employer match, tax-deferred growth. The main differences are the type of employer that offers each plan and some administrative rules.
Does this calculator include salary increases?
No. It holds salary and contribution percentages constant, so the projection is deliberately conservative if your pay rises over your career.
Are taxes included in the projection?
No. The balance shown is before tax. Withdrawals from a traditional 403(b) are taxed as income in retirement, so your spendable amount will be lower than the headline figure.