Years to Goal Calculator
When your corpus catches a goal whose cost is rising too.
- What you will have
- What it will cost
Two things are growing here, not one. The corpus compounds at the expected return, monthly, with the lumpsum and every instalment on top; the goal compounds at inflation, so the target you are chasing moves away while you save. The answer is the first month the first curve is above the second. Because both compound, the gap between assumed return and assumed inflation matters far more than either figure alone — and when inflation matches or beats the return, there is no crossing at all, which the calculator reports rather than hides. Returns are assumed and constant; real ones arrive unevenly, so treat this as a way to compare plans rather than a date to hold anyone to.
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Independent · No commissions · No fund-house data — how the numbers are computed
How it works
This calculator answers the goal planner's question from the other end. Instead of asking what monthly investment a goal needs by a fixed date, it takes the plan you already have — a lumpsum, a monthly amount, an expected return — and works out when it reaches a goal whose cost is rising with inflation.
The defaults are a goal costing ₹20,00,000 today, ₹2,00,000 already invested, ₹25,000 a month at 12% p.a. against 6% inflation. The chart is the answer: one curve is the corpus compounding at the expected return, the other is the cost compounding at inflation, and the marked point is the first month the first curve is above the second.
Two things are growing, not one. That is why the gap between the assumed return and the assumed inflation matters far more than either figure on its own, and why a goal can move further away while you are saving for it. Adding an annual step-up to the monthly amount usually shortens the answer more than a small change in the return assumption does.
When inflation matches or beats the return, the curves never cross and the calculator says so rather than printing a horizon it had to truncate to produce. That is a real result, not an error: at those rates the plan is not slow, it is losing ground, and the fix is a larger contribution or a different allocation rather than more patience.
Find the first month m where corpus(m) >= cost x (1 + inflation)^(m/12)The corpus is advanced one month at a time as (balance + contribution) x (1 + return/12), which is the same monthly, annuity-due convention the SIP and goal calculators use, so the two answers agree.
Frequently asked questions
How long will it take to reach a savings goal?
It is the first month at which your accumulated corpus is at least as large as the goal's cost on that date. Both sides move: the corpus grows at the expected return while the cost grows at inflation. Because both compound, the time to reach a goal is far more sensitive to the gap between the two rates than to the size of either one, and a plan can take dramatically longer than a simple division of target by monthly amount suggests.
Why does the goal amount change over time in this calculator?
Because the cost entered is today's cost, and most goals — a car, a wedding, a course, a house deposit — cost more in future rupees than they do now. Treating the target as fixed while the corpus grows would flatter every plan. Inflating the target at the same time is what makes the crossing point an honest answer rather than an optimistic one.
What if the calculator says the goal is never reached?
That happens when the assumed inflation rate is at or above the assumed return, so the target grows at least as fast as the money chasing it. No length of time fixes that, which is why the calculator reports it plainly instead of returning a very large number. The three levers that do change the answer are a larger monthly contribution, an annual step-up on that contribution, and a higher expected return, which in practice means a higher equity allocation and more volatility.
How is this different from a goal planning calculator?
A goal planner fixes the date and solves for the monthly investment required. This one fixes the monthly investment and solves for the date. They are two views of the same arithmetic and use the same monthly compounding convention, so a SIP sized by the goal planner for a ten-year goal will show a crossing at about ten years here.
Go further
The same maths from the other end: fix the date, solve for the SIP.
Project the contribution side on its own, with the annual increase.
The same problem where the date is set by a child's age, not by you.
How to set the horizon and the allocation before running any numbers.
Why the target moves while you save for it.