Savings Goal Calculator
How many months it takes to reach a savings target, with monthly deposits and interest.
Every savings goal answers the same question: how long will it take? A vacation, a car, a deposit or a wedding all become real decisions once they have a date attached.
Enter what you have saved, what you can put aside each month and the interest your savings earn, and this calculator gives you the timeline and what interest contributes along the way.
At a glance
- What you enter
- Already saved, Monthly deposit, Savings goal, Annual interest rate
- What you get
- Months to reach your goal, Interest your savings earn
- Formula shown
- Yes - every step, right below your results.
- Cost and privacy
- Free, no account needed, and nothing you type is stored.
See worked examples ↓ Read the FAQ ↓ Share this calculator ↓
Results are estimates for general information only - always verify with a professional or official source before acting on them.
How to use the Savings Goal Calculator
- 1 Enter Already saved
- 2 Enter Monthly deposit
- 3 Enter Savings goal
- 4 Enter Annual interest rate - Use 0 if the money sits in a current account.
- 5 Press Calculate. You get Months to reach your goal, Interest your savings earn, and every intermediate step stays visible under “How is this calculated?”
- 6 Change one number at a time to see what moves the result - that is usually the most useful thing a calculator can tell you.
Worked examples
Real numbers run through this calculator. Open any example to load it into the form above and change it.
A $10,000 goal from $1,000 saved at $300 a month
A three-year goal with the money earning 3% a year.
You enter
- Already saved
- $1,000.00
- Monthly deposit
- $300.00
- Savings goal
- $10,000.00
- Annual interest rate
- 3%
You get
- Months to reach your goal
- 29
- Interest your savings earn
- $379.97
The calculation returns about 28.7 months, so the goal is reached on the 29th monthly deposit. You pay in $8,620 and interest covers the remaining $380 of the $9,000 gap, so growth pays for about 4% of the target.
A $25,000 goal from $1,000 saved at $400 a month
A five-year goal with the money earning 4% a year.
You enter
- Already saved
- $1,000.00
- Monthly deposit
- $400.00
- Savings goal
- $25,000.00
- Annual interest rate
- 4%
You get
- Months to reach your goal
- 54
- Interest your savings earn
- $2,250.65
The calculation returns about 54.4 months, so five years of deposits takes you past the target with roughly $2,251 of interest earned along the way. Skip the interest entirely and the same $400 a month needs 60 months, so the 4% rate buys about six months of waiting time.
Guides that go with it
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Frequently asked questions
Does the calculator assume the deposit goes in at the start or the end of the month?
It assumes the deposit is made at the end of each month, so a deposit earns no interest in the month you pay it in and starts compounding from the following month. That is a deliberately cautious assumption and matches how most standing orders behave.
If you deposit on the first of the month instead, your timeline shortens by roughly one month of interest on each contribution, which is a small gain over a one-year goal and a noticeable one over five years.
How is the interest figure worked out?
The annual rate is divided by twelve and applied to the running balance each month, and each deposit then joins the balance for the remaining months. The interest shown is the part of the goal that the growth pays for: the target, minus what you started with, minus everything you paid in yourself.
That means a short goal shows very little interest and a long one shows a lot, even at the same rate. It also means a rate of zero is a perfectly valid entry: the calculator falls back to dividing the gap by the monthly deposit.
What is left out of the timeline?
Tax on interest, account fees and any change in the rate are left out, and so is inflation. The amount you reach is a cash figure, so if your goal is several years away, the thing you are buying may cost more by the time you get there. Raising the target by a rough allowance for price rises is a simpler fix than modelling inflation separately.
Real life also interrupts deposits. A month you skip pushes the date back by about a month, and two skipped months push it back by more than two once the lost interest is counted. Treat the date as a plan you can re-run, not a promise.
Should I raise the monthly deposit or lower the target?
Try both in the form, because they do not cost the same. Lowering the target shortens the wait immediately and permanently, while raising the deposit shortens the wait but costs you money every month until you get there. If the goal is a deposit on a home or a replacement car, the target is usually the more flexible of the two.
If the monthly deposit already feels like a stretch, the honest options are a longer timeline or a smaller goal. A plan that depends on an amount you cannot sustain is a plan that quietly fails, and the fund would be better built steadily: see the Emergency Fund Calculator for the buffer to build first.
Terms used here
Short, plain-language definitions of the words this calculator uses.