A retirement calculator helps you model your financial future and determine if you’re on track to meet your goals or need to make changes. It is one of the few tools available that makes the complicated math of long-term financial modeling easy enough for all but the most dedicated spreadsheet junkies.

Exponent Investment Management a few simple metrics to get an estimate of how much you need to save to reach your goal, what your withdrawals will look like after retirement and more. The tool also helps you understand the impact of different assumptions about your life expectancy, inflation and investment returns on your estimated savings.

For example, if you want to retire at age 65, you can adjust the “Retirement Age” slider to see what you need to save to get there. You can also adjust the “Annual Savings for Retirement” slider to see how much you need to save each year to reach your target.

Planning Your Future: Utilizing a Retirement Calculator

Inflation can be a major factor in how much money you will have at retirement, so it’s important to set the right assumptions. You can also choose whether or not you want to include Social Security benefits in your estimate, as well as whether you’d like to consider the effect of inflation on the 4% rule (an industry standard for how much you should withdraw each year from your retirement savings).

While retirement calculators are a useful tool, it is important to remember that they cannot predict the future with any degree of accuracy. It is simply impossible to know what your investments will return, and even the best investors can sometimes be lucky.