When do you cross each milestone?
Every milestone from your first 10k to your first million, and how the wait between them keeps shrinking.
A starting point, not a forecast.
More options(3)
Saving $500 a month at 7%
11 years 3 months
That is how long the first $100,000 takes. Getting from there to $250,000 — a bigger jump in money — takes only 8 years 8 months. The milestones get further apart while the waits get shorter, because by then the growth is contributing more each year than you are.
- First milestone
- 1 year 8 months
- First 100k
- 11 years 3 months
- Furthest reached
- $1,000,000
Every milestone
| Milestone | Reached after | Wait from the last one |
|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | 1 year 8 months | 1 year 8 months |
| $25,000 | 3 years 9 months | 2 years 1 month |
| $50,000 | 6 years 8 months | 2 years 11 months |
| $100,000 | 11 years 3 months | 4 years 7 months |
| $250,000 | 19 years 11 months | 8 years 8 months |
| $500,000 | 28 years 1 month | 8 years 2 months |
| $1,000,000 | 37 years 2 months | 9 years 1 month |
Read the right-hand column downwards. The waits shrink even as the milestones get further apart — that is the whole of what people mean when they say the first hundred thousand is the hardest.
Why the first hundred thousand takes longest
It is a well-worn line, and unlike most well-worn lines about money it is straightforwardly true. The table above shows why without needing the saying at all: look down the right-hand column and watch the waits shrink while the milestones themselves get further apart.
The reason is that early on, essentially all the progress is you. Growth on a small balance is small in absolute terms — 7% of 8,000 is 560 a year, which next to a 6,000 annual contribution is a rounding error. You are effectively saving in a bank account with a slight tailwind.
Somewhere past the first six-figure sum the balance starts generating annual growth comparable to your contributions, and then larger than them. From that point the milestones arrive on their own schedule rather than yours, and the gaps between them collapse even as the sums get bigger.
The crossover is the number worth knowing
There is a specific balance at which one year's growth equals one year's contributions. Below it, you are the engine. Above it, the portfolio is. At a 7% return, that crossover sits at roughly fourteen times your annual contribution — so someone putting away 6,000 a year crosses it somewhere around 85,000.
Nothing changes on the day you pass it. But it explains why the middle of the journey feels so different from the beginning, and it is the honest answer to why the early years feel like nothing is happening. The mechanism is here.
What the table is not
A schedule. Every date rests on the return arriving evenly, which it will not — the real path wanders around the smooth one and can sit below it for years at a stretch. Treat the table as showing the shape of the journey rather than the dates on it. The shape is the durable insight; the dates are a consequence of an assumption you picked.
If you want the dates in today's money rather than future money, set an inflation rate under More options — the milestones then represent real purchasing power, which is a harder and more honest test.
Common questions
Why does adding more per month help less than I expect later on?
Should the milestones be in today’s money?
What if I cannot reach the later milestones?
Not advice. This tool applies arithmetic to assumptions you entered. It does not know your circumstances, your tax position or your goals, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. Past returns do not predict future ones, and no figure here is a forecast.