Savings Goal Calculator

The rate you type is treated as a nominal annual rate divided by twelve, and interest is credited each month before that month's contribution lands. That is how a savings account normally works. It means 4% typed compounds to about 4.07% over a year, which is the difference between a quoted gross rate and a quoted AER.

Because rounding it down leaves the goal short in the final month. The exact answer is almost never a whole number of pennies, so the amount shown is rounded up and the small overshoot is stated underneath. Paying the rounded-down figure would land you a little under target.

For anything beyond a few years, yes. A target set fifteen years out buys noticeably less than the same number does today. The honest approach is to set the target in today's money and enter the real return, meaning the rate you expect minus inflation, rather than the headline rate.

It is the month at which the growth first exceeds everything you have paid in. On short plans it never arrives, which is the point: under about ten years the monthly amount does nearly all the work and the rate barely moves the answer. Over decades the position reverses.

The figures stay in the tab. Your last settings are kept in this browser's local storage so the page is not blank when you come back, and that copy never leaves the device. There is no account, no server and no upload.

Yes. There is no account, no daily cap, no file-size tier and no watermark, because there is no server cost to recover. The site is funded by clearly disclosed partner recommendations on the Partners page, never by metering the tools.

No. Everything is processed by JavaScript running in your browser, on your device. You can verify it: open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and use the tool. You will see no request carrying your data — because there is nowhere for it to go.