Savings Goal Calculator
Work out exactly how much to save each month to hit a savings goal by a target date — or how long a fixed monthly deposit will take to get there — with interest, a contributions-vs-interest split, and a year-by-year schedule.
Input
The rate your savings account or investment earns. Use 0 for a plain, non-interest-bearing account.
Output
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| No data yet | |
| Year | Deposits | Interest | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| No data yet | |||
Guides
What does this calculator do?
Most savings calculators answer "if I put away $400 a month, what will I have?" This one runs the question backwards. You already know the number you're aiming for — a $25,000 house deposit, a $6,000 emergency fund, $12,000 for a wedding — and what you need is the figure you can actually put in a budget: how much to move across each month.
It solves for whichever variable you're missing:
- Required monthly deposit — you have a goal and a deadline, and want the exact monthly amount that gets you there.
- Time to reach goal — you know what you can afford each month, and want to know when you'll arrive.
Either way it accounts for the interest your balance earns along the way, so you're not over-saving by ignoring growth.
How to use it
- Pick what to solve for — the required deposit, or the time to the goal.
- Enter your savings goal and your current savings (the balance you're starting from — enter 0 if you're starting fresh).
- Depending on the mode, enter either the time to goal (in years or months) or the monthly deposit you can commit to.
- Enter the annual interest rate your account earns, and choose whether it compounds monthly or annually. Use 0% for a plain checking account with no interest.
The Savings Plan table gives you the answer plus a breakdown of how much of the final balance came from your own deposits versus interest. The Year-by-Year Projection shows the balance building up, so you can see where you should be a year or two in.
The math behind it
Both modes are the standard future-value-of-an-annuity relationship, rearranged:
FV = PV × (1 + i)^n + PMT × [((1 + i)^n − 1) / i]
PV is your current savings, PMT the monthly deposit, n the number of months, and i the monthly interest rate. Solving for PMT gives the required deposit; solving for n (with logarithms) gives the time to the goal.
Deposits are treated as arriving at the end of each month, which is the conservative convention — a deposit doesn't earn interest in the month you make it.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between monthly and annual compounding?
Monthly compounding splits the annual rate into twelve monthly credits (i = rate ÷ 12), so you earn interest on interest twelve times a year — 4% compounded monthly is worth about 4.07% a year in practice. Annual compounding credits interest once a year, so 4% is exactly 4%. Savings accounts usually compound monthly or daily; a fixed-term deposit or bond often compounds annually. Pick whichever matches your account.
Why is my projected final balance slightly above the goal? In "time to reach goal" mode the exact answer is usually a fraction of a month, and you can't make a partial deposit — so the result rounds up to the next whole month, which lands you just over the target. In "required monthly deposit" mode the projection lands on the goal exactly.
What if my current savings already grow past the goal on their own? The required deposit comes back as $0.00 with a note saying so. Your existing balance, left alone at that interest rate, reaches the target within the time you gave it.
Does this account for inflation, tax, or fees? No. Figures are in today's nominal dollars, and the calculator assumes a constant rate with no tax on interest and no account fees. For a long-horizon goal, remember that $25,000 in ten years buys less than $25,000 today.
What if I want to model a goal with no deadline at all? Use the "time to reach goal" mode with whatever monthly deposit you can sustain — it tells you the deadline rather than asking for one.
Why won't it accept my numbers? Goals are capped at a 100-year horizon. If "time to reach goal" mode says the target is out of reach, the deposit and interest rate you entered genuinely don't get there within a century — raise either one. A $0 monthly deposit combined with a 0% rate is rejected outright, since nothing would ever make the balance grow.
Related tools
To project growth forwards from a contribution you've already chosen, use the Compound Interest Calculator. For a long-horizon version aimed specifically at retirement, see the Retirement Savings Calculator. If you're paying money down rather than building it up, the Debt Repayment Calculator runs the same time-value math in the other direction. More in the personal finance calculators collection.
Privacy
Every calculation runs locally in your browser. Your goal amounts, balances and rates are never sent to or stored on a server.