Savings Goal Calculator
Saving for a home deposit, an emergency fund, a car or a sabbatical? Enter your target, your timeframe and the interest rate your savings earn — the calculator shows the monthly amount you need and charts your progress toward the goal.
Where should the money sit?
For short-term goals (under roughly 3–5 years), most people keep savings in cash: a high-yield savings account, fixed-term deposit or money-market fund. EU bank deposits are protected up to €100,000 per depositor per bank under national deposit guarantee schemes, which makes cash the low-drama choice when the timeline is short.
For goals further away than about five years, historical data suggests diversified stock investing has usually beaten cash — at the price of large swings along the way. If your goal is far off and flexible, read our guide on how to start investing in Europe and consider whether part of your monthly amount belongs in an investment account instead. Use the FIRE calculator if the goal is financial independence itself.
The emergency fund comes first
Before saving toward anything else, build a buffer of roughly 3–6 months of essential expenses in an instantly accessible account. It is the foundation that keeps a broken car or a gap between jobs from turning into expensive debt — and it's what lets you leave your investments untouched when life happens.
A worked example
Suppose you want €20,000 for a home deposit in five years and already have €2,000 saved. At a 2.5% savings rate you need to put aside about €260 a month — of which interest contributes roughly €1,200 over the period. Shorten the timeline to three years and the monthly amount jumps to about €470; stretch it to seven years and it drops near €190. The lesson generalises: with short timelines, the interest rate barely matters and the saving rate is everything, which is why chasing an extra 0.5% on a savings account matters far less than automating the transfer on payday.
Make it automatic
The single most effective savings technique is embarrassingly simple: a standing order that moves the money to a separate account the day your salary arrives. Money you never see in your spending account doesn't get spent. Most European banks let you open a named sub-account ("Apartment 2031") in minutes — and watching a named goal fill up is genuinely motivating in a way a number in a spreadsheet is not.