How much do you need to retire in the Netherlands?

What your savings and investments have to pay for

In the Netherlands, most of your retirement is paid as income: the AOW (state pension), your pension through work (pillar 2) and any lijfrente (pillar 3). Your savings and investments pay for the rest: everything until those start, and what they don't cover after that. In 2026 a full AOW is €21,203 a year before tax for someone living alone.

You can stop working once your savings and investments cover three things:

1. The years until your last pension starts. Your AOW starts at your AOW age, and a pension through work at the age in your scheme, often 68. Until the first one starts, your savings pay for everything you spend; after that, they pay what it doesn't cover. This stretch is the Pension Bridge.
2. What your pensions don't cover after that, for the rest of your life. Planning until you're 90 leaves a margin for a long life. If you have a partner, plan until the younger of you is 90.
3. What's left on your mortgage, if you'll still pay it once you've stopped.

Add the three, and you have how much you need in savings and investments in the year you stop. All amounts in this guide are in today's euros: adjusted for inflation, so each amount is what that money buys today.

How much an example couple needs

Take a made-up couple of 36 and 34. They earn €73,000 and €61,000 a year before tax, and have €140,000 in savings and investments and a €420,000 mortgage until 2054. They'd like to spend €48,000 a year once retired, after tax and in today's euros, not counting the mortgage: that's their budget. They expect their investments to return 5% a year above inflation, and plan for their money to last until the younger of them is 90.

The bridge is more than three quarters of the savings they need. That's the pattern for most people who stop before their AOW age: the years before the pensions start cost most, and the years after cost little.

Why 25 times your spending is the wrong question

A rule of thumb online says you need 25 times what you spend in a year, or 33 times to be careful. It comes from the 4% rule: take out 4% of your savings a year, and in almost every 30-year stretch of US markets from 1926 to 1995, the money lasted. For the example couple's €48,000, that's €1,200,000 at 25 times and €1,584,000 at 33 times.

The rule assumes your savings pay for everything, for good. In the Netherlands they don't. Almost everyone gets an AOW, and most employees build a pension through work. From 2060, the example couple's pensions pay €45,893 of their €48,000, so their savings only pay the other €2,107 a year. That's why they need €833,862, not €1.2 million.

A multiple is only close if you have no AOW and no pension coming, or if you stop so young that the bridge is most of your life. For anyone else, the question is how long your bridge is and how much your pensions pay after it.

What changes how much you need

Here is the same couple with one change at a time. Each row gives the first year they could stop, and what they'd need that year.

Three things stand out:

• Your budget counts twice. A higher budget makes every year of the bridge cost more, and leaves more for your savings to pay after it.
• A pension through work is worth a lot. Without theirs, they need €242,526 more and stop 4 years later, because their savings have to pay everything the AOW doesn't, for good.
• Stopping later shrinks the bridge. If they stopped in 2047 instead, at 57 and 55, they'd need €677,705. They'd also have had five more years to save.

Missing AOW years matter too. The example partners moved to the Netherlands as adults and get 84% and 76% of a full AOW. With a full AOW each, they'd need €796,087 in 2042: €37,775 less. The AOW gap guide works out what missing years cost.

Most people want to keep the usual retirement age and have a bigger budget, rather than stop early. The same numbers work that way round: if the example couple kept working until 60 and 58, their budget once retired could be €82,800 a year instead of €48,000.

How to find your own figures

Each part of how much you need has its own guide:

• Your AOW and when it starts: the AOW guide, with your AOW age by date of birth. Your own amount is on Mijn SVB, the site of the agency that pays the AOW.
• Your pension through work: the employer pension guide explains how it builds up and where to find every pension you've built.
• The bridge: the Pension Bridge guide explains how long it is and how to make it shorter.
• How much you take out after the bridge: a withdrawal rate of 4% a year has held up in history for money that must last 30 years, and a lower one is safer for longer.
• Tax on your savings: the Box 3 guide. Box 3 (tax on savings and investments) takes part of the return every year, so the savings you need include it. In 2026 the first €59,357 per person is tax-free.
• A lijfrente: the Lijfrente guide. A lijfrente (pillar 3) is your own pension savings, with tax back now, and its payouts lower what your other savings have to cover.
• Your budget once retired: the retirement spending guide turns what you spend now into a budget once retired. It's the one figure only you can give.

Why nobody can say exactly how much you need

Every part of it rests on assumptions about the future. Real returns go up and down, and a good average can hide a bad run in the years just after you stop. Tax rules change too: the government plans to change Box 3 from 2028, for example. And nobody knows how long they'll live, which is why it's safer to plan for the money to last until at least 90.

So treat the savings you need as a range, not a single target. Working one or two years longer, or keeping your budget a little lower in the first years, gives you a margin if returns disappoint.