Solve for the monthly deposit, the time to your goal, or what your budget reaches — with inflation on the target and a month-by-month path.
The return is what your savings earn. The inflation rate is how fast the thing you are buying gets more expensive — set it to 0 to keep the target fixed.
Three of the presets are built on figures a national body publishes, so you can check them rather than take our word for it.
The deposit figure is our arithmetic on two NAR numbers, not a figure NAR publishes directly.
| Goal | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| First-time house deposit (10% down) | $44,060 |
| Wedding, excluding the ring | $34,000 |
| Used car, listing price | $27,000 |
The travel, renovation and budget presets are round illustrations — no national body publishes an average for them, and inventing one would be worse than leaving it out.
Estimates only. Returns are not guaranteed, and the cost of what you are saving for can move faster or slower than the inflation rate you enter. This is general information, not financial advice.
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Most savings calculators answer one question: how much per month. That only helps if the monthly figure is the thing you do not know. This one also runs the other two directions — how long your current deposit takes to get there, and what a deposit you can actually afford will reach — and it indexes the goal for inflation, because the cost of a house deposit or a wedding does not sit still while you save for it.
The target is first moved to the deadline: a goal costing $30,000 today, rising 3% a year, costs about $34,780 in five years. Your existing savings are grown over the same horizon at your expected return. Whatever gap is left is divided by the future-value factor for a stream of end-of-month deposits, which gives the deposit that closes it exactly. Solving for time inverts the same relationship month by month rather than in closed form, because an inflating target moves while you chase it.
Monthly deposit formula
The median first-time buyer puts down 10%. On the June 2026 median existing-home price of $440,600, that is about $44,060.
The Knot puts the average 2025 US wedding at $34,000, before the engagement ring. An 18-month engagement is a demanding savings horizon.
Average used-vehicle listing prices reached about $27,000 in Q2 2026. Saving the price outright avoids a loan entirely.
No national figure exists for either, so set your own cost and use the calculator to test whether the date you have in mind is realistic.
Monthly deposit, time to goal, or the goal a fixed budget reaches. Most calculators only do the first, which is no use when your budget is the fixed part.
A goal quoted in today's money understates what you need. On a four-year house deposit at 3% inflation, ignoring it leaves you roughly 14% short.
The house, wedding and car presets come from NAR, The Knot and Cox Automotive, each cited with its period. The rest are labelled as illustrations rather than dressed up as data.
A month-by-month line of your balance against the rising target, so you can see when the two actually meet instead of only reading a single number.
On the median first-time-buyer deposit of about $44,060 — 10% of the $440,600 median existing-home price in June 2026 — starting from $8,000 and saving over four years at a 4% return with 3% cost inflation, the answer is roughly $774 a month. Ignore the inflation and it looks like $667, which is the error that leaves buyers short at the end.
Yes, for anything beyond a year or two. A goal is a thing, not a number, and the thing keeps repricing. At 3% a year a $30,000 target costs about $34,780 in five years — roughly 16% more. Setting the inflation field to 0 gives the traditional fixed-target answer if you want to compare.
For a goal inside about three years, use a high-yield savings account or CD rate, because market losses cannot be waited out on that timescale. For longer horizons a diversified portfolio assumption is defensible, but returns are not guaranteed and a shortfall lands on your deadline, not on an average.
Switch the calculator to "Time to goal" and enter what you can deposit each month. It steps forward month by month until your balance crosses the target, which is necessary rather than fussy: with inflation switched on the target is rising while you save, so there is no single formula to invert.
No. An emergency fund is sized from your essential monthly expenses and how exposed your income is, so the target is derived rather than chosen. Here you name the cost. Use the emergency fund calculator first — a house deposit built on top of no cash reserve tends to get spent on the first emergency.