Calculate your pension gap in ten minutes – here’s how to do it on your cell phone
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Prevention sounds complicated. She isn’t. Anyone who has ten minutes and a smartphone can calculate their own pension gap, including inflation and taxes. No advice necessary.
The topic of retirement planning is often put off because it feels complicated. Numbers, technical terms, uncertainties. Where do you even start?
Content partnership:
This article was created in collaboration with Fortunalista. Fortunalista is a financial education platform that helps women become self-determined in their finances. With a clear understanding of the challenges around money, Fortunalista shows how women deal with it Investment Code find your way to financial independence.
The answer: on the smartphone. “The smartphone is enough for a first look,” says Margarethe Honisch, financial expert and founder of Fortunalista. “We can even roughly take inflation and taxes into account and see in black and white where we stand.”
Clarity is not a question of expensive advice. It’s a matter of ten minutes. If you know your own number, you will no longer underestimate the number.
What is needed
Before you start, have three things ready:
- The smartphone or a calculator
- The annual pension information from the German pension insurance, if available
- The current monthly net salary
If you don’t have any pension information to hand, work with an estimate. That’s completely enough for an initial overview.
Step 1: Estimate monthly needs in old age
The first number is the most personal: How much money do you need each month to maintain your standard of living in old age?
A tried and tested rule of thumb: 70 to 80 percent of your current net salary. Some costs are eliminated, for example travel costs to work. Others are increasing, for example health care costs.
Invoice on your smartphone:
Net salary times 0.75 equals approximate requirements in old age.
Example: 2,800 euros net times 0.75 equals 2,100 euros monthly requirement.
Own needs: _______ euros
Step 2: Determine the expected statutory pension
Anyone who has pension information can find the expected monthly pension there. This number is a gross value.
Anyone who has no pension information can estimate that the statutory pension currently replaces around 48 percent of the last net salary.
Invoice on your smartphone:
Net salary times 0.48 equals approximate gross pension.
Example: 2,800 euros times 0.48 equals 1,344 euros gross pension.
Expected gross pension: _______ euros
Step 3: Consider deductions
The pension notice shows a gross amount. What actually arrives is less. Health insurance, nursing care insurance and taxes make up around 15 to 20 percent.
Invoice on your smartphone:
Gross pension times 0.82 equals approximate net pension.
Example: 1,344 euros times 0.82 equals 1,102 euros net pension.
Expected net pension: _______ euros
Step 4: Consider inflation
Here’s the part that most people skip and that makes the biggest difference.
What 1,100 euros can buy today will buy significantly less in 25 years. With average inflation of 2.5 percent per year, purchasing power is halved in around 28 years.
In order to express the net pension in today’s purchasing power, it is adjusted with an inflation factor. For 20 years until retirement, the following roughly applies: the net pension times 0.61 gives the purchasing power in today’s prices. For 30 years: times 0.47.
Invoice on your smartphone:
Net pension times 0.61 equals real purchasing power in 20 years.
Example: 1,102 euros times 0.61 equals around 672 euros real purchasing power in today’s prices.
Real pension in today’s purchasing power: _______ euros
Step 5: Calculate the pension gap
Now comes the crucial number.
Invoice on your smartphone:
Monthly requirements minus real net pension equals pension gap.
Example: 2,100 euros minus 672 euros equals 1,428 euros monthly pension gap.
This is the sum that must be built up privately in order to maintain the desired standard of living in old age.
Own pension gap: _______ euros per month
What this number means
A monthly pension gap of 1,428 euros over 20 years of pension receipt corresponds to around 342,000 euros in total requirement.
This is not a number that should scare you. It is a number that provides orientation. Anyone who knows them knows what they are working towards. Anyone who doesn’t know them almost always underestimates the need.
“If you know your own number, you will no longer underestimate the number,” emphasizes Margarethe Honisch. “And those who stop underestimating start taking action.”
What to do next
The pension gap is well known. What comes now is the first concrete step.
An ETF savings plan that invests automatically every month is the most accessible tool to close the gap step by step. What counts is not the amount of the first amount. It’s the beginning.
150 euros per month with a 7 percent return over 25 years: around 121,000 euros final capital. 45,000 euros were deposited. Compound interest took care of the rest.
If you start today, you will give compound interest the time it needs.
Content partnership:
Two-hour online workshop on retirement planning for women
In the free live workshop, women calculate their personal pension gap themselves, using only their cell phones and including inflation and taxes. SPIEGEL bestselling author Margarethe Honisch explains clearly what the pension reform means in concrete terms and how the gap can be closed step by step, in every phase of life and even from small amounts.
Free · Live · For beginners. Registration and dates at finanzen.fortunalista.de/kostenloser-renten-workshop-2026.
Conclusion
Ten minutes. A smartphone. Five bills. That’s enough for the most important first look at your own retirement provision situation.
Prevention is not a question of expensive advice or complicated software. It is a question of clarity. And clarity starts with your own number.