What is the Super Guarantee rate?

The Super Guarantee (SG) is the minimum percentage of your salary your employer must pay into your Superannuation fund. It is 11.5% for the 2024–25 year and is legislated to rise to 12%. The tool defaults to 11.5% but you can change it to model future rates.

How is the projected Super balance calculated?

Each year the tool adds your employer SG contribution plus any voluntary contributions to your balance, then grows the whole balance at your expected return after fees. Your salary grows each year too, so contributions rise over time. This compounds until your retirement age.

How is retirement income estimated?

The tool spreads your projected balance, which keeps earning a return in retirement, across the years between retirement and your planned end age. It is an annuitised drawdown: a sustainable annual amount that draws the balance down to roughly zero over that period.

Does this include the Age Pension or tax?

No. It models only your Superannuation. The government Age Pension, contributions tax, the transfer balance cap and earnings tax in pension phase are not included. Treat the result as your private Super projection, not your total retirement income.

What return should I assume?

Returns vary by investment option. A balanced or growth Super option has historically returned mid-single-digit percentages after fees over the long run, but past performance is not a guarantee. Try a few values to see how sensitive your projection is to the return assumption.

Australia Pension & Retirement Calculator

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An Australia Superannuation and retirement calculator that projects how large your Super balance could grow and the annual retirement income it can sustainably provide. It is built around Australia’s mandatory system: the Super Guarantee (SG), currently 11.5% of salary, paid by your employer, plus any voluntary contributions you add.

How it works

The tool runs a year-by-year simulation from your current age to retirement. Each year:

contribution = salary * (SG% + voluntary%)
balance      = (balance + contribution) * (1 + return%)
salary       = salary * (1 + salaryGrowth%)

Contributions land in the fund and the whole balance compounds at your expected after-fee return. Because salary grows over time, contributions rise too, and decades of compounding do most of the heavy lifting.

To estimate retirement income, the projected balance keeps earning a return in retirement and is drawn down as a sustainable annuity over the years between your retirement age and your planned end age:

annualIncome = balance * r / (1 - (1 + r)^-yearsInRetirement)

where r is the in-retirement return. This is the level annual amount that exhausts the balance over that period.

Example and notes

A 30-year-old earning 90,000 AUD with a 50,000 AUD Super balance, an 11.5% SG, a 6% after-fee return and retirement at 67 could project a balance well into the high six figures, supporting a meaningful annual income through to age 90.

This models your Super only. It excludes the Age Pension, contributions tax, the transfer balance cap and pension-phase earnings tax. All figures are calculated locally in your browser and are not financial advice.