Savings Goal Calculator

Savings Goal Calculator answers the question in either direction. Give it a target and a monthly amount and it tells you how long it takes. Give it a target and a deadline and it tells you what the monthly amount has to be.

Interest is included, because over any period longer than a year or two it changes the answer materially. Each month's contribution is added, then the balance earns a month's interest, and the cycle repeats. The final figure is the sum of what you put in plus what the interest added, and both are shown separately, so you can see how much of the goal the account did for you.

Starting from something already saved changes the arithmetic more than people expect, because that amount earns interest for the whole period rather than being drip-fed in. The calculator takes an opening balance for exactly this reason.

What it cannot do is predict a rate. The rate you enter is an assumption, and it is the assumption the answer is most sensitive to. For a cash savings account the rate is known and short-lived; for anything invested it is a guess, and a longer period makes the guess less reliable rather than more.

This is arithmetic, not financial advice. It tells you what the numbers do; it cannot tell you whether a decision is right for your circumstances. For anything that matters, check the figures against the actual offer and talk to someone qualified.

Everything is worked out inside your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged or stored, which matters for the financial calculators in particular: the figures you put into them are nobody else's business.

• Solve for the monthly amount or for the time taken
• Opening balance included, with its own interest
• Contributions and interest shown as separate totals
• Year-by-year table of the balance
• Any currency and any rate, including zero
• Tells you plainly when a target cannot be reached in the time given
• Runs entirely on your device

The savings goal calculator is used by writers, developers, students, marketers and anyone else who needs the job done once without installing software. Common cases include:

• Saving a deposit for a house by a particular date
• Working out what a holiday costs per month
• Setting a realistic monthly transfer on payday
• Seeing whether a target is achievable at all in the time
• Checking what difference a better savings rate makes