Savings rate calculator: how much of your income are you saving?
The share of your pay you actually save — pension and employer money included — and what that rate builds over a working life.
What lands in your bank account, after tax and after any pension or 401(k) contributions.
Transfers to savings, an ISA or IRA, a brokerage account. Not money you plan to spend later this year.
Taken from pay before it reaches you, so it never shows on a bank statement.
What your employer pays into your pension or 401(k) on top of your own.
How long this saving carries on, for the projection.
More options(7)
Before tax. Leave at 0 to skip the gross-basis rate.
Taken off the return, so the pot is shown in today's money.
Saving $1,000 of $4,500 a month
22.2%
Counting the $500 a month that goes into a pension before pay arrives, $1,000 of the $4,500 coming in each month is saved: a savings rate of 22.2%. Worked out from take-home pay alone, it is 12.5%. You live on $42,000 a year, so each year of saving puts away 3.4 months of that spending. If returns average 7% a year (4.9% after 2% inflation), 30 more years of this would build $801,435 in today's money — 19.1 years of today's spending. At 4% it is $488,171; at 10%, $1,367,732.
- Rate on take-home pay only
- 12.5%
- Saved a year
- $12,000
- Spending put away per year
- 3.4 months
Shown in today's money: the saving is held level in real terms, so in the money actually paid in it rises with prices each year. No tax is modelled on any of it.
If returns average…
Nobody knows which of these happens
| Assumption | Pot after 30 years | Years of today's spending |
|---|---|---|
| 4% a year — cautious | $488,171 | 11.6 years |
| 7% a year — middle | $801,435 | 19.1 years |
| 10% a year — optimistic | $1,367,732 | 32.6 years |
Markets do not return the same amount every year. The band shows the same plan under three different assumptions, so you can see how much the answer depends on a number nobody knows.
The same income at other savings rates
$54,000 a year coming in, split at each rate, over 30 years if returns average 7% a year. Each row changes both the saving and the spending.
| Savings rate | Living on | Spending put away per year | Pot, in years of spending |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | $51,300 | 0.6 months | 3.5 years |
| 10% | $48,600 | 1.3 months | 7.4 years |
| 15% | $45,900 | 2.1 months | 11.8 years |
| 20% | $43,200 | 3.0 months | 16.7 years |
| 22.2% (yours) | $42,000 | 3.4 months | 19.1 years |
| 30% | $37,800 | 5.1 months | 28.6 years |
| 40% | $32,400 | 8.0 months | 44.5 years |
| 50% | $27,000 | 12.0 months | 66.8 years |
What this savings rate calculator works out
A savings rate is the share of the money coming in that does not get spent. This savings rate calculator builds it from amounts rather than asking you to know it already: what reaches your bank account, what you move out of it into savings or investments, and the pension or 401(k) money that is taken from pay before it ever arrives. Then it shows what that rate adds up to over the working years you have left, if returns average a rate you choose.
It does not say whether your rate is high enough. There is no right answer to that without knowing what the money is for, and this site does not pick one. It answers the arithmetic: what share is this, and what does it build?
Why the same household has three savings rates
The number depends entirely on what you divide by, and the calculator shows the versions side by side so the choice is visible. On the starting figures — $4,000 a month take-home, $500 of it saved, $300 of your own pension contributions and $200 from an employer — the saving is $1,000 a month.
- On take-home pay alone, the rate is $500 out of $4,000: 12.5%. This is the one a bank statement shows, and it misses half the saving.
- Counting everything on both sides, it is $1,000 out of $4,500: 22.2%. This is the headline figure. The pension money is added to the income as well as to the saving, because it was income before it was saving.
- On gross pay, the rate is lower again, because tax sits in the denominator. If the payslip showed $66,000 a year before tax — a figure picked for the example, not worked out from any tax rules — the rate would be $12,000 out of $68,400 with the employer money included: 17.5%. Enter a gross figure under “More options” to see yours.
One version is plainly wrong, and it is a common slip: adding the pension money to the saving but not to the income. $1,000 divided by $4,000 is 25%, which counts the same $500 as saved without ever counting it as earned.
A month of saving is measured in months of spending
The second figure under the answer turns the rate into time. Whatever is not saved is what you live on — here $3,500 a month, or $42,000 a year — so a year of saving $12,000 puts away about 3.4 months of that spending, before any growth. The relationship is not a straight line. At 10%, a year of saving buys 1.3 months; at 20%, 3 months; at 40%, 8 months. At 50% it is exactly 12 — one year of saving pays for one year of living — because saving and spending are then the same amount.
That curve is why small changes look bigger here than they feel. Moving $1,000 a year from spending to saving on the starting figures takes the rate from 22.2% to 24.1% and the months put away each year from 3.4 to 3.8, because the same move raises the saving and lowers the spending it is measured against.
What the rate builds over a working life
The projection carries the same saving forward for the working years you enter. It runs in today’s money — the pot grows at the real return, about 4.9% for 7% with 2% inflation, and the saving is held level in real terms — so the result can be set against the spending you have now. On the starting figures, 30 years of saving $1,000 a month builds about $801,000 if returns average 7% a year, which is about 19 years of today’s spending. If returns average 4% it is about $488,000, or 11.6 years; at 10%, about $1.37 million, or 32.6 years. The nominal vs real return guide explains why the rate has to be the real one when the target is in today’s money.
Leave the pension money out and the picture halves: the $500 a month from take-home pay alone builds about $401,000 over the same 30 years at 7%, or 9.5 years of spending. The money that never reaches the bank account is doing half the work.
“Years of spending” is a plain division — the pot over a year’s spending — and it ignores any growth after you stop. To see how long a pot actually lasts while you draw on it, use how long will my money last. To turn a savings rate into the year the pot could cover your spending for good, the FIRE calculator uses the same engine and the same rule, so the two pages agree given the same figures.
What this calculator leaves out
- Tax. A dollar into a pension counts the same as a dollar of take-home pay here, even though the two are taxed differently on the way in and the way out. That depends on the account and the country, so none of it is modelled. The take-home pay calculator turns a gross salary into the take-home figure.
- Debt repayments. Paying down a loan’s principal raises net worth, but it is not counted as saving unless you enter it as saving. Whether it should be is a definition, not a fact; the calculator follows whatever you put in the box.
- A steady return. Every year earns the same rate. Real returns arrive in a different order every time, which is why the band shows three rates rather than one.
- A changing rate. The projection holds today’s saving level for every year entered. Pay rises, career breaks and years of saving more or less are not assumed.
Related tools
The retirement number calculator starts from a spending figure rather than a rate, and the compound growth calculator projects any monthly amount on its own. The guide how much should I save works through the same arithmetic for specific goals, without a rule of thumb.
Common questions
What is a good savings rate?
Should employer contributions count in my savings rate?
Is the savings rate worked out on gross or net income?
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.