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Summary
The lifetime earnings calculator projects your total gross and net income over your working career. By modelling salary growth, inflation, and tax, it shows the cumulative earnings from your current age to retirement. This helps put individual salary decisions in context — a £5,000 pay rise at age 30 compounds to significantly more than £5,000 over a career.
How it works
The projection model
The calculator takes your current salary and projects it forward year by year:
Year N salary = Current salary x (1 + annual growth rate)^N
Cumulative lifetime earnings is the sum of all annual salaries from now until retirement:
Lifetime earnings = Sum of projected salary for each year
Growth assumptions
Salary growth comes from two sources:
- Real growth (promotions, experience, job changes) — typically 1-3% per year on average across a career, though it varies enormously by profession and career stage
- Inflation adjustment — typically 2-3% per year, which maintains purchasing power but does not represent a real increase
Combined, nominal salary growth of 3-5% per year is a reasonable central estimate for UK workers.
Tax over a lifetime
The calculator also computes cumulative net (after-tax) earnings. As your salary grows and crosses tax thresholds, the proportion lost to tax increases — the effective tax rate on your lifetime earnings is higher than the rate on your starting salary.
Worked example
Current age: 28, Salary: £45,000, Growth: 3%, Retirement: 65
- Working years remaining: 37
- Year 1: £45,000
- Year 10: £45,000 x 1.03^10 = £60,476
- Year 20: £45,000 x 1.03^20 = £81,273
- Year 37: £45,000 x 1.03^37 = £134,099
Cumulative gross: approximately £2,870,000 Cumulative net (after tax/NI): approximately £2,020,000
For comparison, at 1% growth: cumulative gross = ~£1,950,000. The difference between 1% and 3% growth is over £900,000 in lifetime earnings.
Inputs explained
- Current salary — your gross annual salary today
- Current age — your age now
- Retirement age — when you plan to stop working (UK state pension age is 66, rising to 67)
- Annual growth rate — expected average salary increase per year
- Inflation rate — for computing real (purchasing-power-adjusted) earnings
Outputs explained
- Total lifetime gross earnings — cumulative pre-tax income
- Total lifetime net earnings — cumulative after-tax income
- Year-by-year projection — salary, tax, and cumulative totals for each year
- Real vs nominal — earnings adjusted for inflation to show purchasing power
Assumptions & limitations
- Assumes continuous employment with no career breaks, unemployment, or part-time periods.
- Constant growth rate is a simplification. In reality, salary growth is higher early in careers and flattens later.
- Does not model pension contributions being deducted from take-home, or employer pension growth.
- Tax rates and thresholds are assumed to remain at current levels. In practice, the government adjusts these regularly.
- Career changes that involve pay cuts (e.g., retraining) are not modelled.