How long will it take to save?

A free calculator. Nothing to sign up for, nothing stored.

Put in what you are saving for and what you can put aside each month, and this gives you the date. Or fix the date and it tells you the monthly figure instead. No interest assumptions, because a goal a year or two out barely earns any and pretending otherwise just makes the date look closer than it is.

How the calculation works

What you still need, divided by what you put aside each month. That is the whole of it. If you have saved $1,200 of a $5,000 emergency fund and you put aside $250 a month, you need $3,800 more — 15.2 months, which this rounds up to 16. A part month still needs the whole contribution, so rounding down would give you a date you cannot hit.

Fill in the months field instead and it runs backwards: $3,800 over 12 months is $316.67 a month. Neither direction is the hard part.

The number people get wrong

It is almost never the arithmetic. It is the monthly contribution. People pick a figure by looking at their bank balance and deciding what feels affordable — but a balance still contains rent, the bills that have not gone out yet, and whatever other goals are already holding. A contribution set against that number is set against money that is already spoken for, which is why it survives two months and then quietly stops.

A contribution you can actually keep comes out of what is left after those. If you want to check that figure, the affordability calculator works it out.

Why goals stall even when the maths is right

Because the money never left. A contribution that stays in your everyday account is still spendable, and money that is spendable gets spent — not deliberately, just over a month. The goal is not competing with a decision, it is competing with every small purchase between now and payday.

The fix is that committed money has to stop counting as spare. That is how Xfin handles it: money you commit to a goal leaves the figure you spend against the moment you commit it, so progress is real rather than a percentage that means nothing.

Should I include interest?

For a goal one or two years out, no. The difference is small, and assuming a rate you might not get makes the date optimistic in exactly the direction you do not want. This calculator leaves it out on purpose, which means the date it gives is a floor rather than a forecast. For anything over about five years, interest starts to matter and a compound-interest calculator is the right tool instead.

Doing this without the arithmetic

This page asks for the figures. The app keeps them current: it tracks what each goal holds, what you have contributed, and what that leaves you to spend, and it updates the date on its own as things change. See how it works →

Related: can I afford it? · what’s actually left · about Xfin