A free and interactive investment and savings calculator with compound interest to calculate the actual future value (FV) of your investments and savings. Compound interest and growth over many years can significantly change your total ROI (return on investment). A higher interest ROR (rate of return) will compound faster and result in a larger calculated future value.
The Investment Calculator
The Investment Calculator is designed to make your calculations easier when you are trying to plan for your future wealth. Investments grow with the power of compounding interest, which in turn has a snowball effect on the amount of interest or returns earned. It may start small, however as your interest compounds over time, your investment provides you with greater returns.
Whether you are planning your investments or your savings; planning personal finance goals properly and having accurate calculations provides you with confidence that your financial goals will be achieved
Our free savings calculator takes into account your starting point, that is all your current investments and savings, the contributions that you intend to make going forward, and the rate of return received on your assets.
Using the Savings Calculator
Start by entering all your assets (current investments and savings) into the Input section. Your assets include items like your house’s value, savings, cash, and other assets. The savings calculator allows for different types of tax savings such as Open Taxable Savings, Non-Taxable Savings, and Tax-Deferred Savings, designed to make your allocation easier.
To receive the most accurate results from the investment calculator, take some time and gather all your latest statements from your investments and savings. Doing this will not only ensure that you get accurate results from the investment calculator but will also give you an idea of the current value of your assets.
Next, go to the What-If section, where you can change the expected rate of return on your investment (Savings & Asset Rate of Return), annual contributions for both Taxable Savings Contributions Annually, and Tax-Deferred Savings Contributions Annually, as well as the inflation rate expected.
The rate of return and the inflation rate has been pre-populated for your convenience and suits most circumstances, however, you can edit these to match the rate of return and the inflation rate specific to your circumstances.
Reading the Investment Calculator Results
Future Investment Value
The Future Value is the value of your investments in a specific time period - 25 years in terms of the savings calculator - and shows the effect of investments over a long period of time. This result is based on your starting point (determined in the Input section) and the contributions you’ve entered in the What-If section.
A good exercise is to increase your annual contributions slightly to see the impact of the future value. You will quickly realize that the more you save and invest in assets, the larger the value of your assets will be in 25 years’ time.
Total Investment Return
This shows the total return that your assets, investments, and savings have made - above the amount of savings or investments that you contributed over time. The return is in the form of either interest earned, dividends received, or growth in the market value of your investments.
The savings calculator can also calculate what your total return would be if you stop contributing. Change the contribution amounts to $0 and see the impact of simply leaving your assets to grow over time.
The Total Return is determined by the Savings & Asset Rate of Return as well as the inflation rate. The higher return you are able to get on your assets, the higher the total return on your investments will be. Hereby you’ll see how important it is to ensure that you save and invest in assets that give you the highest potential return, to grow your wealth faster.
Investment Saving Value
This graph shows you the value of your investment for each year that passes. As time goes by, the total value of your investment keeps growing based on your contributions and the rate of return of your assets.
Hover over each time period to see the future value of your investment at that time point. The graph shows you the longer you keep your assets (and do not withdraw from them) the greater the future value of your assets.
The Power of Time Invested
As an example, for using the investment calculator, let’s assume that you have $10,000 worth of assets (split between cash savings and other assets), and you invest $10,000 per year, at a 7% rate of return - you will have $914,100 in 25 years time.
If you only do this for 10 years, the future value of your assets will be $180,418. That means that by consistently investing for 15 years more, you will grow your future value by about 500%. This is a result of compounding growth over a long period of time.
Once you have entered all your data into the savings calculator, hover over the 10-year mark in the Investment Savings Value graph, and compare it with your Future Value shown (or the 25-year mark). This is an example of the power of investing for a long period of time.
Compounding Investment Growth
The power of time invested is only strengthened by compounding growth which means that as your assets grow, they start growing at increasing amounts. This is because the larger the value of your assets, the larger return it provides.
As an example, we can look at an investment account (let’s say $10,000) that provides a compounding rate of return of 7% per year. For this example, we are only going to assume a once-off fixed amount is invested with no contributions per year afterward.
The return in year one is $700 ($10,000 x 7%). Compounding growth means that the return from your investment is added to your existing investment. Therefore, the value of your investment will be $10,700 by the end of year one.
In year two, the return on your investment is $749 ($10,700 x 7%), thereby increasing your return by $49 ($749 - $700), by just leaving your investment to compound over time. Although the increased return might seem small when looking at one or two years, compounding growth adds over time.
Using the same example, by year 10 the value of this investment is $19,672, providing returns of $9,672 ($19,672 - $10,000). This means that the original investment of $10,000 added $9,672 by just compounding over time.
In year 25 the value of this investment is $54,274, which means that the asset grew by $34,602 ($54,274 - $19,672) in the 15 years from the 10-year mark. This is the power of compounding growth and what you can achieve when you plan wisely using our free investment calculator.
Now use our free Investment and Savings Calculator above to determine how your investments will perform over time.