Hundred SummersYour safe withdrawal rate: solved, not assumed
The internet argues 4% versus 3.5%; both are answers to an American question. Your withdrawal rate depends on UK income tax on every pension pound you draw, a State Pension arriving in your late 60s, and your own horizon, so this page solves it: the Hundred Summers app's sustainable-spending solver finds the most you could draw with every year funded, and only then turns it into a percentage. Your figures never leave your browser.
Loading the calculator… (requires JavaScript; your figures never leave your browser)
Worked example
Computed when this page was built by the same engine that runs the calculator above, so the figures below and the live tool can never disagree. Change any input above to see your own.
| Inputs | |
|---|---|
| Age | 60 |
| Pot | £500,000 |
| Growth | 5.0% |
| Include State Pension | Yes |
| Plan to | 95 |
| Results | |
|---|---|
| Sustainable spending a year, solved by projection | £27,148 |
| As a withdrawal rate | 5.4% |
| The 4% rule would say | £20,000 |
| 3.5% would say | £17,500 |
The next question
What if markets crash as I retire? →Retiring into a market crash
Or answer it with everything else: the full Hundred Summers plan connects your pay, pensions, savings, property, tax and spending year by year, and stress-tests them across 500 simulated market histories.
Read the guides
- The 4% rule: what it misses for UK retirees →Where the famous retirement withdrawal rule comes from, why its US assumptions travel badly to the UK, and what a real projection tests instead: tax, the State Pension, and the market sequences that actually broke retirements.
- FIRE in the UK: what the American playbook misses →The 25× rule and savings-rate maths transfer; the mechanics don't. The pension access age bridge, ISA-vs-pension sequencing, UK tax on the way out, and where Coast and Barista FI fit: the honest UK version.
- Sequence-of-returns risk, shown with real market history →Two retirees earn the same average return and one runs out of money: why the order of returns dominates retirement outcomes, which historical cohorts it broke, and how to test a plan against it honestly.
Pounds first, percentages second
A withdrawal rate is a compression of a real question, “what can I spend?”, into a single number that forgets your tax position and your State Pension. This page runs the question properly: a year-by-year projection drawing what you need, grossing pension withdrawals up for income tax at real bands, crediting the State Pension when it arrives, and binary-searching the highest spending level at which every year funds. The percentage is derived from the answer, not assumed before it.
The result often surprises both camps. The 4%-is-doomed camp forgets the State Pension carries a big slice of every later year; the 4%-is-fine camp forgets tax and early retirement. And every steady-growth answer, including this one, carries the same caveat: sequence risk. The full Hundred Summers plan takes this same solver and stress-tests it through thousands of simulated markets and every historical window since 1928, which is the difference between an average and a promise. Related: drawdown calculator, how much do I need? and the 4% rule guide.