One pot you can touch, two you can't. Here's how they grow.
Project your vested, retirement, and savings pots under South Africa's two-pot rules.
- Seed Capital (into savings pot)
- R 20 000
- Vested Pot (final)
- R 838 972
- Retirement Pot (final)
- R 1 098 287
- Savings Pot (final)
- R 642 363
- Total at Retirement
- R 2 579 622
Healthy growth across all three pots. Future you is taking notes.
Pot growth over time
How the two-pot system works
Since 1 September 2024, every retirement contribution you make splits automatically into two pots. A third goes into the savings pot, which you can withdraw from once per tax year (minimum R2,000) — useful for emergencies, but each withdrawal is taxed at your marginal rate and reduces what's left to grow. The other two-thirds goes into the retirement pot, which stays locked until you actually retire, just like the old system.
Whatever you'd already saved before 1 September 2024 became your vested pot. It keeps growing under the old rules and you can't add to it directly, but 10% of its value (capped at R30,000) was seeded into your savings pot on day one, so there was something accessible immediately without waiting for new contributions to build up.
This calculator projects all three pots forward using your expected growth rate, showing what locking away two-thirds of every contribution does for your retirement balance — and what withdrawing from the savings pot along the way costs you in lost growth.
A worked example
Say you've got R200,000 already saved, contribute R3,000 a month, and expect 8% annual growth over 20 years. Day one, R20,000 of your existing savings seeds the savings pot (10% of R200,000, under the R30,000 cap), leaving R180,000 in the vested pot to keep growing on its own.
From there, R1,000 a month (a third of your contribution) builds the savings pot alongside that seed capital, while R2,000 a month (two-thirds) builds the retirement pot from scratch. After 20 years, the locked retirement pot ends up the largest of the three, simply because nothing was ever pulled out of it.
Add an annual withdrawal from the savings pot in the calculator above and watch how much smaller that pot ends up at retirement — every rand withdrawn early is a rand that never got the full 20 years to compound.
Frequently asked questions
What is the two-pot retirement system?
It's a South African retirement reform, effective 1 September 2024, that splits every new retirement contribution into a savings pot (one-third, accessible once a year) and a retirement pot (two-thirds, locked until retirement). It replaced a system where you generally couldn't touch retirement savings at all before retiring or resigning.
What happened to my retirement savings from before September 2024?
It became your vested pot. It keeps growing at your fund's return rate, but you can't add new contributions to it and it follows the old withdrawal rules. As a once-off, 10% of its value — capped at R30,000 — was transferred into your new savings pot so you had some accessible money from day one.
How much can I withdraw from my savings pot?
Once per tax year, with a minimum withdrawal of R2,000. There's no fixed maximum beyond what's actually in the pot, but the withdrawal is added to your taxable income for that year and taxed at your marginal rate — so a large withdrawal can push you into a higher bracket for that year.
Can I withdraw from my retirement pot before I retire?
No. The retirement pot stays locked until retirement, in the same way all retirement savings used to work before September 2024. It's designed to make sure at least two-thirds of every contribution is still there when you actually stop working.
Does this calculator account for tax on savings pot withdrawals?
No. It shows the effect of a withdrawal on the savings pot's growth, but not the tax you'd pay on it — that withdrawal is taxed as income in the year you take it, at your normal marginal rate, so the amount you actually receive will be lower than the amount withdrawn from the pot.