How we calculate

The short version

The calculator simulates your money month by month, from your age today until age 95, in today’s francs. Each month it grows your savings, adds what you save, unlocks pension money on its legal date, pays your spending in retirement, and subtracts AHV contributions and simplified taxes. Independence is the earliest month from which the plan holds until the end.

Today’s francs

All amounts are real: they keep today’s purchasing power. You enter returns before inflation, as they are usually quoted; the calculator subtracts the inflation assumption. The pension fund’s credited interest is the BVG minimum rate minus inflation.

When are you independent?

Two conditions must both hold if you stop working in a given month:

1. The bridge: your accessible savings (investments and cash outside the pension fund and 3a) never run out before all pensions and lump sums have started.
2. The long run: once AHV, the pension fund and Pillar 3a are all paying, what is left covers the remaining yearly gap at your withdrawal rate.

The calculator tests retirement months with a binary search and reports the earliest one that passes. The first condition is why the bridge years matter so much in Switzerland: money you cannot touch before 60 does not pay your rent at 50.

Swiss rules in the model

• AHV pension from the legal formula (AHVG Art. 34) on your average yearly income, reduced by 1/44 per missing contribution year, 6.8 % less per year of early draw, the official supplements for deferral, and the 13th pension paid from December 2026, spread evenly over the year.
• AHV for non-employed people until the reference age, from the official 2026 table on wealth plus 20 times pension income. Pension-fund and 3a balances count only after they are paid out.
• Pension fund (BVG): your balance grows with your credits and the minimum interest. By default credits follow the legal age steps (10 %, 15 %, 18 % of the coordinated salary). If you stop before 58, the money moves to vested benefits and is paid out as a lump sum five years before the reference age. From 58 you can choose a pension (at the mandatory conversion rate), a lump sum, or half and half.
• Pillar 3a: contributions up to the yearly maximum, invested at the portfolio return or held as cash, paid out five years before the reference age.

Taxes by canton

In retirement the calculator charges three taxes for the canton you choose: wealth tax on accessible savings, income tax on AHV, pension-fund pensions and a taxable yield of 1.5 % of savings (dividends and interest; private capital gains are tax-free), and a one-off tax on lump sums from the pension fund and 3a, with lump sums of the same year taxed together. The amounts come from the Federal Tax Administration’s tax calculator for tax year 2026: total federal, cantonal and communal tax in each cantonal capital, without church tax, for a single person or a married couple, at a few sample amounts, with straight lines in between. Income tax while you work is assumed to be included in your net income. Your municipality, children and deductions can move the real bill by thousands of francs, so check the latest rules with your canton; the canton overview links every cantonal tax office.

What the model does not do yet

• Couples (two incomes, two AHV pensions with the 150 % cap) and children.
• Municipal tax differences, children and church tax (taxes use the cantonal capital).
• Year-to-year market swings (Monte Carlo) and historical sequences: today every year earns the average return, which hides the risk of a bad first decade. Read sequence risk.
• Changes in income, part-time work and one-off expenses over time.
• Lower AHV early-draw rates and reference ages for women born 1961 to 1969.
• Plan-specific pension-fund rules (enveloping conversion rates, buy-ins).
• Health insurance changes after retirement (include them in your retirement spending).

Changelog

• 12 October 2026: Taxes by canton: wealth tax, income tax in retirement and lump-sum tax now come from 2026 figures of the Federal Tax Administration for the 26 cantonal capitals, replacing the flat placeholder rates. Results with taxes switched on can change, most in high-tax cantons.
• 11 October 2026: Swiss parameters for 2026 verified against official sources; AHV pension switched to the legal formula; non-employed contributions now follow the official stepped table; pension-fund credits follow the legal age steps; pension money no longer counts as wealth for the AHV contribution and wealth tax. New defaults: 4 % withdrawal rate, stocks 8 % and bonds 1.5 % a year before inflation.