Enter your final average salary, years of service, and accrual rate to estimate your defined-benefit pension payout.
How to Use the Pension Calculator
Three numbers are all this needs: final average salary, years of service, and the accrual rate your plan credits per year of service (commonly quoted as a percentage, often somewhere between 1% and 2.5%). Change any one and the annual figure, its monthly equivalent, and the income-replacement percentage all shift together.
Annual Pension = Final Average Salary × Years of Service × Accrual RateA Formula, Not a Balance
Every other retirement calculator in this batch — the 401(k), the IRA, the Roth IRA — projects an account balance: a pool of money that grows or shrinks based on contributions and market returns, and that you could, in theory, run out of. A pension is nothing like that. It's a defined-benefit promise: a formula fixes the payout for as long as you live, funded by the employer or a pension fund rather than by watching a personal account balance. There's no balance to check, no market risk on your end, and — usually — no way to run out early.
That distinction is why this calculator doesn't ask about a balance or a return rate at all. Multiply salary by years of service by the accrual rate, and the payout is already determined.
"Final Average Salary" Means Something Different at Every Employer
Some plans define it as your literal final year's pay; others average your highest three or five years, which usually produces a higher number if your income has been rising. Accrual rates themselves range roughly from 1% to 2.5% depending on the plan, and public-sector pensions often accrue more generously than private ones. None of that is standardized, so pull your plan's actual definition and rate from your benefits documentation rather than guessing.
One more limitation worth flagging: many plans reduce the accrual multiplier if you retire before the plan's normal retirement age, sometimes substantially. This calculator assumes you're using the plan's full, unreduced rate — it doesn't model an early-retirement penalty.