Enter your prior year-end account balance and age to calculate your Required Minimum Distribution using the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table.
How to Use the RMD Calculator
Enter your account balance as of December 31 of last year, along with your age this year. The calculator looks up the IRS divisor for your age and divides your balance by it.
RMD = Prior Year-End Account Balance ÷ IRS Life Expectancy DivisorThe Divisor Shrinks Every Year You Age
The IRS's Uniform Lifetime Table assigns a divisor to each age from 72 through 120, and the divisor gets smaller as you get older — reflecting a shorter remaining life expectancy — which means the required percentage of your balance you must withdraw climbs every year, even if the balance itself never grows. At 75, the divisor is 24.6, meaning roughly 4.07% of the balance; by 90, it drops to 12.2, over 8%.
This table applies to most account owners. If your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than 10 years younger than you, a different Joint Life and Last Survivor table applies instead and produces a smaller required distribution — not modeled here.
Why RMDs Exist at All
Traditional 401(k)s, traditional IRAs, and similar accounts let contributions and growth sit untaxed for decades. RMDs are the point where that deferral ends — the IRS requires you to start pulling taxable income out on a fixed schedule instead of letting the whole balance keep compounding tax-free indefinitely. Roth IRAs are the notable exception: the original owner never has to take an RMD from one.
Not everyone needs to worry about this yet. Depending on your birth year, RMDs don't start until age 73 or 75 under the SECURE 2.0 Act, so entering an age below 73 here returns a note instead of a distribution amount that doesn't actually apply to you yet.