Tool 19 · Pension & employer match
Don't leave free money on the table.
An employer match is the highest-return investment most people will ever be offered — an instant 100% on every euro, before any market growth. See what your workplace pension grows to, and exactly how much of it your employer pays for.
of which $0 exists because of your employer's match.
They add one euro for each of yours, up to this share of salary.
Pro features. Add your existing pot, set your own return and match rate, model pay rises, and export the year-by-year build-up.
Model your real scheme
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Some schemes add 50c per euro; some add 1.50. Set yours.
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| You contribute | Employer adds | Pot at retirement |
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The best deal in personal finance
Somewhere in your employment contract there is probably a sentence worth tens — often hundreds — of thousands of euros: "we will match your pension contributions up to X% of salary." An employer match is money your employer only pays if you contribute too. Put in 5% of your salary and they add another 5% on top; decline, and that money simply never exists. It is an instant, guaranteed 100% return before a single day of market growth — a deal no investment, no savings account, and no debt-payoff strategy can come close to matching.
And yet a remarkable share of workers don't capture their full match — usually not from choice, but because the default enrollment percentage was set below the cap and nobody ever looked at it again. This calculator makes the stakes visible. It projects your workplace pension to retirement, splitting the final pot into three layers: what you contributed, what your employer added, and what compounding built on top of both. The chart draws your pot alongside a second, dashed curve — the same career without the match — and the gap between them is the money at stake.
The compounding effect is what makes the match so much more valuable than it looks. €2,250 a year of employer money (5% of a €45,000 salary) sounds nice; €2,250 a year invested for 37 years is transformational, because every matched euro earns returns, and those returns earn returns. That's why the gap between the two curves widens relentlessly: you're not just losing the match when you under-contribute — you're losing everything the match would have grown into. Pair this with the retirement number calculator to see how far the pot goes, and the compound interest tool to understand the engine underneath.
A worked example
€45,000 salary · you contribute 5% · employer matches up to 5% · age 30 to 67 · 6% return
You put in €2,250 a year and your employer matches it with another €2,250 — about €187 a month each. By 67, the pot reaches roughly €612,000. Around €306,000 of that — half the entire pot — exists only because of the employer's contributions and the growth on them. Contributing 3% instead of 5% would forfeit part of the match and cost roughly €245,000 by retirement, for the sake of keeping about €75 a month of gross pay today.
Things to keep in mind
- Capture the full match before anything else. Before overpaying low-interest debt, before taxable investing — the match's instant 100% return beats them all. (High-interest card debt is the one exception worth clearing alongside — see the payoff planner.)
- Check your scheme's exact formula. "100% of the first 5%" and "50% of the first 10%" cost your employer the same but require different contributions from you to capture in full. The Pro match-rate slider models both.
- Pension contributions are usually tax-advantaged. In most countries they're taken before income tax, so €100 into the pension costs meaningfully less than €100 of take-home pay — making the deal even better than this calculator shows.
- Raises compound the match. Because contributions are a percentage of salary, every pay rise automatically raises both your contribution and the match. The Pro salary-growth slider shows the effect.
- Job changes reset the rules. When comparing offers, a 3% salary bump with a weaker match can easily be a worse total package. Run both offers through this tool.
Frequently asked questions
What does "employer matches up to 5%" actually mean?
For every euro you contribute, your employer contributes one too — but only on the first 5% of your salary. Contribute 5% and you get the full match; contribute 3% and you only get 3% matched; contribute 8% and the extra 3% is yours alone, unmatched (still often worthwhile, just not doubled).
Is it ever wrong to take the match?
Almost never. The main exceptions are severe cash emergencies — if contributing means missing rent or building up expensive card debt, stabilise first (see the emergency fund tool) — or rare schemes with extreme vesting conditions you're unlikely to meet.
What return should I assume?
Workplace pensions are typically invested in diversified funds; 5–7% a year is a common long-run planning range before inflation. The free tier uses 6%; Pro lets you set your own and test pessimistic cases.
What is vesting?
Some employers only let you keep their contributions after you've stayed a certain time (e.g. 2–3 years). Your own contributions are always yours. If you're planning to leave soon, check your scheme's vesting rules.
Does this model tax relief?
Not directly — relief rules differ so much by country that a generic model would mislead. But note that in most systems contributions come from pre-tax salary, which makes the effective cost of contributing lower than the headline amount. Treat this tool's result as conservative.