How Retirement Readiness Works
The quiz turns a few simple inputs into a single question: will your future income cover the retirement you want? Here's each piece of that calculation, in plain language.
1. Your Income Goal
Rather than chasing a lump-sum target, the quiz starts with income. It takes a share of your current pay — the replacement ratio — as the yearly income your plan should produce in retirement. A common rule of thumb is 70–85%, because some expenses shrink or disappear once you stop working: payroll taxes, commuting, and the money you were setting aside for retirement itself. The quiz defaults to 80% and you can adjust it to match your own budget.
2. Growing What You Have
Your current savings and your ongoing monthly contributions grow until the year you plan to retire. Two things drive that growth: the return your investments earn and the number of years you have left. Because a dollar decades away is worth less than a dollar today, the quiz works entirely in today's dollars — it grows your savings at the real return (your investment return minus inflation), so every figure you see is in the purchasing power you understand now.
3. Turning Savings into Income — the 4% Rule
A pile of savings isn't income until you draw from it. A widely used starting point is the 4% rule: withdrawing about 4% of your portfolio in the first year of retirement has historically had a good chance of lasting roughly 30 years. The quiz applies your chosen withdrawal rate to the projected nest egg to estimate the yearly income your portfolio can sustainably provide — then adds your Social Security and any pension or annuity on top.
4. The Score and the Bands
The quiz compares projected income to your goal. The ratio between them becomes a 0–100 score and places you in one of four bands:
The percentages are the projected income as a share of your goal. Landing below "On Track" isn't a verdict — it's a starting point for the next-steps list.
5. The Levers That Close a Gap
If there's a shortfall, three levers can close it, and the quiz quantifies each for your situation:
Save More
How much extra per month, between now and retirement, would fully fund the gap.
Work Longer
The retirement age at which more growth and a shorter drawdown would reach the goal on their own.
Adjust the Goal
The share of income your current plan already supports, in case your real budget is closer to that.
Where This Is Simplified
A quick check trades precision for clarity. The quiz assumes a steady return every year (real markets don't cooperate), level contributions, a flat withdrawal rate, and Social Security and pension figures you provide in today's dollars. It doesn't model taxes, one-off expenses, or the order-of-returns risk that matters early in retirement. For a year-by-year view, use the Retirement Income Visualizer; for a Social Security estimate, use Social Security Basics.