Annuity Payout Calculator
A $100,000 single-premium immediate annuity bought by a 65-year-old man pays an estimated $732 a month for life (8.78% of the premium a year), priced from the SSA 2022 period life table at 5.11% interest, the 10-year Treasury par yield on September 23, 2026, less a 5% loading.
Enter your premium, age, sex, a second life and when payments start: you get the monthly income, the payout rate, the break-even age, and how much of each payment is taxable. An estimate on stated assumptions, not a quote from any insurer.
Estimate your annuity payout
Monthly income from $100,000 by age
| Age at purchase | Man | Woman | Joint couple |
|---|---|---|---|
| 55 | $595 | $552 | $501 |
| 60 | $654 | $600 | $536 |
| 65 | $732 | $665 | $585 |
| 70 | $843 | $760 | $654 |
| 75 | $1,013 | $904 | $759 |
| 80 | $1,276 | $1,124 | $920 |
| 85 | $1,695 | $1,478 | $1,175 |
The table follows the interest rate and loading you set above. Payments rise with age because fewer payments are expected; a joint annuity pays less because it must last until the second death.
How the estimate is priced
An immediate annuity is priced by present value: the premium, less the insurer’s loading, must equal the value today of every monthly payment you are expected to live to receive. So monthly payment = premium × (1 − loading) ÷ A, where A adds up, for every future month, the chance you are alive to be paid times the discount factor (1 + rate)−months/12. For a joint annuity the chance is that at least one of the two is alive, treating the two lives as independent.
Mortality: the SSA 2022 period life table (as used in the 2025 Trustees Report), the same table QuantCalc’s annuity study and Social Security research use; deaths are spread evenly within each year of age, and “unisex” blends the male and female curves 50/50. It describes the whole population, with no allowance for future improvement. People who buy annuities live longer on average, and insurers price for that, so real quotes usually come in below a population-table estimate — the loading is where you can allow for it.
Interest: the default is the 10-year Treasury par yield of 5.11% on September 23, 2026, a stand-in for the high-grade bonds an insurer buys. Rates change daily; change the rate to see how sensitive the payout is.
Product: life only (payments stop at the last death, nothing to heirs), level payments with no cost-of-living increase, no period-certain or cash-refund guarantee. Guarantees and inflation increases each lower the payment. State premium taxes, where they apply, are not included.
How much of each payment is taxable
Bought with after-tax savings (non-qualified): part of each payment is your own premium coming back and is not taxed. Under IRC §72(b) the tax-free part is the exclusion ratio — investment in the contract divided by the expected return — and the expected return is the annual payment times the multiple for your age on the annuity starting date in Table V of Treas. Reg. §1.72-9 (Table VI for a joint and survivor annuity). Monthly payments need no adjustment to the multiple (§1.72-5(a)(2)). The regulation’s own worked example: $100 a month bought at 66, Table V multiple 19.2, expected return $23,040. At 65 the multiple is 20.0, so $100,000 of premium makes $416.67 of each monthly payment tax-free.
The exclusion stops once the whole premium has come back tax-free, roughly when you reach your starting age plus the multiple; every payment after that is fully taxable (§72(b)(2)). If you die before recovering it, the unrecovered amount is deductible on the final return (§72(b)(3)).
Bought inside an IRA or 401(k) with pre-tax money (qualified): the whole payment is ordinary income, because none of the money was taxed going in. If the account holds after-tax contributions, those come back tax-free under the plan’s own recovery rules; this calculator does not model that case.
Annuity or portfolio withdrawals?
An annuity’s payout rate is not a withdrawal rate. It is high because it spends your principal and pools longevity risk: people who die early subsidise those who live long, and nothing is left at death. Taking the same percentage from an invested portfolio has no such pool behind it, and a run of losses in the first years can empty it early — sequence-of-returns risk, measured in QuantCalc’s sequence-of-returns study. For the full trade-off, including what inflation does to a level payment by year 20 and 30, read Annuity or the 4 percent rule.
Common questions
- How much does a $100,000 annuity pay per month?
- On this calculator’s assumptions (SSA 2022 period life table, 5.11% interest, 5% loading, life only, first payment a month after purchase), about $732 a month for a 65-year-old man, $665 for a 65-year-old woman and $585 for a 65-year-old couple with the full payment continuing to the survivor. At 70 the man’s figure rises to about $843. These are estimates, not quotes; real quotes are usually lower because annuity buyers live longer than the population the table describes.
- What is the break-even age on an annuity?
- The age at which the payments you have received add up to the premium, ignoring interest. A 65-year-old man paying $100,000 for about $732 a month gets his money back after 137 payments, at about 76 years 5 months; the SSA table gives him a 74% chance of living that long.
- How much of an annuity payment is taxable?
- For an annuity bought with after-tax money, IRC section 72 treats part of each payment as a tax-free return of your premium: the exclusion ratio, premium divided by expected return, where expected return is the annual payment times the IRS Table V multiple for your age (Table VI for a joint annuity). At 65 the multiple is 20.0 (Treas. Reg. §1.72-9), so $100,000 of premium makes $416.67 of each monthly payment tax-free until the premium is recovered, about 20 years later. An annuity bought inside an IRA or 401(k) with pre-tax money is fully taxable.
- Why does the payout depend on the interest rate?
- The insurer invests the premium, mostly in bonds, and pays it back with interest over your remaining life. A higher rate means each future payment costs less today, so the same premium buys a larger monthly income. At 65 for a man, moving the rate from 5.11% to 4.11% cuts the estimate by about 8%.
- Is an annuity better than withdrawing from a portfolio?
- It trades flexibility and anything left for heirs for income that cannot run out. A life annuity paying 8.78% a year pays that amount however long you live and whatever markets do; withdrawing 8.78% a year from a portfolio can run dry while you are still alive, because withdrawals made during early losses cannot be recovered. Even at 4% a year, QuantCalc’s annuity-versus-4% study found 9.2% to 21.5% of simulated 30-year retirements running out. The calculator links the same premium and withdrawal to a free Monte Carlo run so you can see that sequence risk for yourself.