Savings goal calculator for children
How long your child will save for a bike, putting aside half of what they earn while you pay interest. It runs in a second, and you can share the result with a link.
Saved up in 7 months
Roughly by March 2027
- Put aside
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- Added by interest
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- Total towards the goal
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Each bar is the end of a month. The dashed line is the goal.
Ten years is not enough
Past ten years the arithmetic stops meaning anything: both the goal and the prices will be different by then. Try raising the share your child puts aside, or pick a smaller goal — a short, reachable one works better than a distant one.
How this is calculated
Your child is paid once a week and puts part of it aside. Interest is added to the savings every day, on the current balance rather than on the original sum. So the interest starts earning interest, and the further from the start, the larger the right-hand column grows.
The formula is the one that runs in the app: the annual rate is divided by 365 and applied to the balance each day. There is no separate arithmetic for the website — otherwise the figure here would drift away from the figure in your child's wallet.
What rate to set
The rate here is about visibility rather than return. Its job is to let a child see the difference between spending now and waiting: over a few months the interest should add something noticeable without being fantastical. The horizon itself depends on age — even eleven-year-olds do not hold on for a month. Too high a rate breaks the lesson from the other side: money starts appearing faster than chores bring it in, and the reason to earn disappears.
Which gives a practical rule: interest should not outpace earnings. If the right-hand column, “Added by interest”, comes out larger than the left one, the rate is too high for this goal.
What to do with the result
Seven months means nothing until it becomes a date. Show your child the “roughly by” line — it is the one part of the calculation that works as motivation. After that it is a matter of choosing what to adjust: the share of earnings, the size of the goal, or the number of chores in a week.
The page link carries your whole calculation, so you can send it to the other parent or keep it and come back later to compare it with how things actually went.