Enter your IRA balance, annual contribution, expected return, and time horizon to project its future value.
How to Use the IRA Calculator
Four inputs — current balance, planned annual contribution, expected return, and number of years — drive one result set that recalculates the instant you change any of them. There's no separate mode or toggle: everything here assumes a lump-sum start plus one contribution added at the end of each year, growing until the year count runs out.
A traditional IRA works on a simple trade: money goes in pre-tax (or as a deduction against this year's income), grows without being taxed year to year, and only gets taxed — as ordinary income, at whatever rate applies when you withdraw it — once it comes out. The compounding itself follows the standard future-value-of-an-annuity formula, assuming the year's contribution lands at year-end:
FV = Balance × (1 + r)ⁿ + Contribution × [((1 + r)ⁿ − 1) ÷ r]r is the annual return, n the number of years. The first term is what your current balance alone grows into; the second is what a fixed annual contribution, made every year for n years, adds on top of it.
Deductibility and Contribution Limits Both Depend on Your Income
Not every traditional IRA contribution is tax-deductible. Once your income — or your spouse's, if either of you is covered by a workplace retirement plan — crosses certain thresholds, the deduction phases out even though you can usually still contribute. Those income thresholds and the annual contribution limit itself are both set by the IRS and adjusted most years, so don't treat the "Annual Contribution" field here as a ceiling the IRS is guaranteed to allow; verify the current limit and your deduction eligibility before committing to a number.
Everything this calculator shows is pre-tax growth. What you'd actually keep after withdrawal depends on your tax bracket decades from now, which nobody can calculate today.