Savings Goal & Sinking Fund Calculator
Almost nobody is saving for one thing. There is a trip, a car down payment, the holidays, insurance that arrives twice a year, and one paycheck covering all of it. Put every goal on the shelf, enter what you can move each month, and the tool answers the question a single-goal calculator cannot: in what order should the money go, and which goals will be late. Free, no signup.
Last reviewed: September 2026 · Rates: FDIC national savings average 0.38% (data through July 2026), top high-yield accounts 4.00%–4.21% · Benchmarks: NRF 2025, AAA 2025, The Knot 2026
Deadlines you hit
4 of 4
On track — every deadline covered
Smallest budget that works
$975
funding the nearest deadline first
What separate calculators ask
$1,731
each goal funded on its own
Ordering the same goals saves $756/mo against adding up separate calculators — same goals, same dates.
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Fix it first
Vacation is what sets your minimum. Everything else fits underneath it.
Trimming saves more here ($38/mo against $17/mo), because the next deadline binds soon after.
What the rate is worth
Interest earned over 24 months on the same deposits. The gap between the national average and the benchmark is $690. Savings interest is taxable as ordinary income.
Rates as of September 2026: FDIC national savings average 0.38% (data through July 2026); top high-yield accounts 4.00%–4.21%.
Your jars want separate buckets
Several banks let one account hold named buckets or vaults, which is exactly this shelf. At 4.10% your jars earn $760 over 24 months; at the 4.10% benchmark they earn $760.
Strategy showdown
| Goal | Parallel | Priority Waterfall | Deadline-Firstrecommended | Quick Wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emergency fundby Jun '27 | ✗ Aug '27+2 mo | ✓ Jun '27 | ✓ Feb '27 | ✓ Feb '27 |
| Laptopby Jan '27 | ✗ May '27+4 mo | ✗ Mar '27+2 mo | ✓ Nov '26 | ✓ Nov '26 |
| Vacationby Jul '27 | ✗ Aug '27+1 mo | ✓ Jul '27 | ✓ Jun '27 | ✓ Jun '27 |
| Car down paymentby Mar '28 | ✓ Dec '27 | ✓ Dec '27 | ✓ Dec '27 | ✓ Dec '27 |
| On time | 1 / 4 | 3 / 4 | 4 / 4 | 4 / 4 |
The nearest deadline takes every spare dollar until its jar is full, then the next nearest.
When each jar fills
The white tick is the deadline. A red tail means the jar fills after it.
Fill and drain
The formulas, with your numbers
Monthly rate
r = (1 + 0.0410)^(1/12) − 1 = 0.3354% per month
A quoted APY is a full year of growth with compounding baked in, so unwinding it takes the twelfth root. At 4.10% that gives 0.3354% a month, where simple division would claim 0.3417%.
Balance after n deposits
FV = S(1+r)^n + P((1+r)^n − 1) / r
Monthly amount for one goal
P = (T − S(1+r)^n) · r / ((1+r)^n − 1)
For Emergency fund: ($6,000 − $2,500×(1+r)^9) × r / ((1+r)^9 − 1) = $375/mo.
Smallest workable budget
There is no closed form once goals interact, so the tool searches for it: it runs the whole shelf month by month in deadline order at a candidate budget, halves the range depending on whether every deadline held, and repeats to the dollar. Yours came out at $975/mo against $1,731/mo for the same goals funded separately.
The deadline convention
A dated jar has to be full by the 1st of its deadline month, which is the conservative reading — the flights get booked at the start of the month, not the end.
How to save for multiple goals at once
Run each goal through its own calculator, add up the answers, and you get a number that is almost always too big. Take the simplest possible case: $1,000 needed in ten months and $1,000 needed in twenty. The first wants $100 a month, the second wants $50, so the stack says $150. But fund only the first and it is finished in month ten — at which point that $100 has nowhere to go except the second goal, which then finishes exactly on time in month twenty. Both deadlines met, on $100 a month.
The $50 difference is not a trick. It is the money a single-goal calculator cannot see, because it has no idea the other goal exists or that yours will finish early and free its contribution up. Stack five jars with staggered dates and the effect compounds: the default shelf here — emergency fund, Christmas, laptop, vacation and a car down payment — asks for $1,731 a month when each goal is priced alone, and needs $975 when they are funded in date order. Same five goals, same five dates, $756 a month of difference. (Those figures are the default shelf run from a September start at 4.10% APY; because the presets are dated relative to today, the tool's own numbers shift a little as the calendar moves.)
That gap only exists when deadlines are staggered. Three goals all due the same month cannot hand money to each other, and the two numbers converge — which the hero panel says out loud rather than pretending to a saving that is not there.
Four ways to split one budget, and what each costs you
The same $1,200 a month produces four different outcomes on the default shelf depending purely on the order the money goes in. Each strategy below is simulated month by month across every jar, with interest credited, bills drained on their due dates and completed goals withdrawn when they are spent.
| Order | How it splits | Result on the default shelf |
|---|---|---|
| Parallel | Every goal gets a share of the budget each month, in proportion to what it still needs. | 1 of 4 on time — the laptop lands 4 months late, the emergency fund 2, the vacation 1. |
| Priority Waterfall | Your own ranking. Each goal takes only its level payment before the next one starts. | 3 of 4 on time — only the laptop slips, by 2 months. |
| Deadline-First | The nearest date takes every spare dollar until that jar is full, then the next nearest. | 4 of 4 on time. Recommended on this shelf. |
| Quick Wins | Smallest remaining gap first, the way a debt snowball works. | 4 of 4 on time, and the first jar fills in month 2. |
Splitting evenly is the intuitive move and the worst one here: spreading $1,200 across five jars leaves every jar underfunded at the moment its date arrives, so three of the four dated goals miss. Ordering by date hits all four. The recommendation is picked on deadlines hit first, then on how much lateness remains weighted by your own priorities, then on how fast the emergency fund closes — so a strategy never wins by sacrificing your safety net for a marginally earlier holiday.
What is a sinking fund, and how is it different from an emergency fund?
Some expenses are not emergencies at all. Car insurance bills every six months, registration renews once a year, December arrives on schedule — these are entirely predictable and still wreck budgets, because a monthly budget has no line for a bill that is not monthly. A sinking fund fixes that by converting the lump into a level amount: $690 of insurance six months out is $115 a month, and the jar is exactly empty the day the bill is paid, then starts filling for the next cycle.
An emergency fund is the opposite kind of money. It has no date, no known amount, and it is never spent on a plan. Put sinking fund vs emergency fund side by side and that is the whole distinction: one pays for something you can already name, the other exists because you cannot. The difference is structural in the tool as well — recurring jars drain at their due dates, dated jars are withdrawn when the thing gets bought, and the jar flagged as your emergency fund is the only one never emptied. Leave it off the shelf and the Safety grade caps at D, because in practice a shelf with no emergency jar just means the vacation jar becomes the emergency jar.
One disambiguation, since the same two words mean something else in two other places. In corporate finance a sinking fund is a reserve a bond issuer builds to retire debt at maturity. In UK leasehold property it is a reserve the service charge feeds for major building works. Neither is what this page is about.
20 sinking fund categories worth a jar
The picker inside the tool adds any of these with a sensible cadence already set, so a December bill lands on the next December rather than twelve months from today. Most of the starting amounts are editable placeholders and nothing more — your insurance is not the average insurance. Three are anchored to a dated source: Christmas starts at $890, from the National Retail Federation 2025 survey putting average holiday spending at $890.49 a person; car repairs at $1,656, from the AAA 2025 Your Driving Costs figure of 11.04 cents a mile for maintenance, repair and tires at 15,000 miles a year; and weddings at $34,000, from The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study covering 2025 weddings, excluding the engagement ring.
| Group | Categories |
|---|---|
| Vehicle | Car insurance (every 6 months) · Car repairs · Car replacement · Registration |
| Household & health | Emergency fund · Home repairs · Medical deductible · Pet care · Property tax |
| Family & occasions | Vacation · Christmas · Birthdays · Back to school · Kids activities · Wedding |
| Stuff & recurring spend | Annual subscriptions · Electronics · Clothing · Furniture · Giving |
Four to six jars covers most households. The budgeting reason to name them individually rather than keeping one pot of irregular expenses is that a named jar has a due date, and a due date is what lets the tool tell you a bill is going to arrive short before it does.
Worked examples: vacation, wedding, car and Christmas savings
Every figure here comes out of the same engine the tool runs, at 4.10% APY and a September start, with each goal priced on its own so the numbers are comparable.
- Vacation — $4,000 in ten months from $500 already saved: $343/mo, or $158.34 every two weeks.
- Wedding — $34,000 in twenty months from $6,000: $1,336/mo, or $616.52 a biweekly paycheck.
- Car down payment — $8,000 in eighteen months from $1,000: $375/mo, or $172.88 every two weeks.
- Emergency fund — $6,000 in nine months from $2,500: $375/mo.
- Christmas — a $1,000 fund is $89/mo started in January, $165/mo started in June, and $332/mo started in September.
The Christmas line is the one worth staring at. Nothing about the holiday changed between those three rows; only the number of months did. That is the entire argument for starting a sinking fund the week after the thing it pays for, and it is why the Late-Start Holidays preset grades a D — three jars on $300 a month against a $536 minimum, with the Black Friday purchase landing four months late.
Where to keep your sinking funds
Money with a date inside three to five years belongs in cash, and the only real decision is what rate that cash earns. The spread is large right now. The FDIC national average for savings accounts sat at 0.38% APY on data through July 2026, while the best high-yield accounts paid between 4.00% and 4.21% that September. On the default five-jar shelf, identical deposits earn $70 of interest over 24 months at the national average and $760 at the 4.10% benchmark — a $690 difference for moving the money and nothing else.
Whether the jars live in separate accounts or one pooled account is a bookkeeping choice, not a financial one. Several banks offer named savings buckets or vaults inside a single account, which maps onto this shelf exactly and saves opening five accounts. A spreadsheet against one balance works identically as long as you keep the per-jar numbers honest. What matters more: savings interest is taxable as ordinary income in the year it is credited, and the interest here is calculated on the pooled balance and attributed back per jar.
The case for cash weakens past about five years, where inflation becomes the larger risk and a longer horizon can absorb a bad year in the market. The tool flags any jar dated more than sixty months out for that reason. It stays a flag rather than advice, because a dated goal still has to be in cash near the end regardless of how it got there.
The sinking fund formula
For a single goal, the monthly amount is the future-value annuity solved for the payment: P = (T − S(1+r)^n) × r ÷ ((1+r)^n − 1), where T is the target, S is what is already in the jar, n is months until the deadline, and r is the monthly rate. Two details matter more than the algebra. First, r is not APY ÷ 12. A quoted APY is the whole year's growth with compounding baked in, so unwinding it takes the twelfth root — (1 + APY)^(1/12) − 1 — which at 4.10% comes out at 0.3354% a month against the 0.3417% simple division hands you. Second, n counts deposits that land before the 1st of the deadline month, because the thing usually gets paid for at the start of the month rather than the end.
Once goals share a budget, there is no closed form. Whether a given budget works depends on the order the money goes in, which jars finish when, and which bills drain on the way. So the smallest workable budget is found rather than derived: run the whole shelf month by month at a candidate budget, check whether every deadline held and every bill arrived funded, and narrow the range to the dollar. The result is the number in the hero, and the goal whose deadline fails first just below it is the bottleneck the Fix It panel names.
How your plan is graded
Six dimensions, weighted, mapped to a letter. Two of them look at the budget from different angles on purpose: Coverage measures how much cushion sits above the minimum, while Deadlines measures what actually lands on time under the recommended order. A plan can hit every date on a razor-thin budget and score A on one while scoring B on the other, which is the useful signal — it means the plan works but has nothing spare if a jar grows.
| Dimension | Weight | How it scores |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | 25% | Budget ÷ the smallest workable budget. 1.25× earns an A, 1.00× a B, below 0.80× an F. |
| Deadlines | 25% | Share of dated goals landing on time under the recommended order. All of them earns an A, below 40% an F. |
| Safety | 15% | A when the emergency jar is already full, B within 6 months at priority 1, D when there is no emergency jar at all. |
| Yield | 10% | Your APY against the 4.10% benchmark rather than an absolute rate, so the grade survives a rate cycle. |
| Bills | 15% | A for no due date arriving short over 24 months, B for a single first-cycle catch-up, F for three or more. |
| Quick Win | 10% | Months until the first jar fills. Three or fewer earns an A, because an early win is what makes the habit hold. |
The default shelf grades A−: a 1.23× cushion, four of four deadlines met, the emergency fund whole in five months, a rate matching the benchmark, no bill arriving short, and the first jar full in month two. The Engaged Couple preset grades B despite hitting every date, because its emergency fund takes 21 months and no jar fills before month fourteen — a plan that works but offers nothing to feel good about for over a year. Each dimension carries the one change that would move it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a sinking fund, and how do you calculate one?
A sinking fund is a jar for a bill you know is coming but do not pay monthly — car insurance every six months, the holidays every December, registration every year. You divide the amount by the months until it is due, so a $690 insurance bill six months out is $115 a month. When you already have something set aside the formula becomes P = (T − S(1+r)^n) × r ÷ ((1+r)^n − 1), where r is the monthly rate. In accounting the same words mean a reserve a company builds to retire a bond; the personal-finance version below is the budgeting one.
What are the most common sinking fund categories?
The twenty in the category picker cover what people actually get blindsided by: car insurance (usually billed every six months), car repairs, car replacement, registration, emergency fund, home repairs, medical deductible, pet care, property tax, vacation, Christmas, birthdays, back to school, kids activities, wedding, annual subscriptions, electronics, clothing, furniture and giving. Three carry a dated figure rather than a guess: Christmas starts at $890 from the National Retail Federation 2025 survey, car repairs at $1,656 from AAA 11.04 cents-a-mile maintenance figure at 15,000 miles, and weddings at $34,000 from The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study.
How many sinking funds should I have?
Enough to cover the bills that actually break your month, which for most households is four to six, and the shelf here caps at eight. The limit is not willpower, it is arithmetic: every jar you add raises the monthly total, and past a certain point the budget cannot fill them all by their dates. The Family Sinking Funds preset runs four bills plus a vacation on $850 a month and clears every due date with a $742 minimum. The Late-Start Holidays preset runs three jars on $300 and needs $536, which is why it grades D and one bill arrives short.
What is the difference between a sinking fund and an emergency fund?
A sinking fund is for an expense you can name and date; an emergency fund is for the one you cannot. Christmas arrives every December whether or not you planned for it, so it gets a jar that fills and empties on a cycle. A transmission failure has no date, so that money sits and is never spent on a deadline. In this tool the jar flagged as the emergency fund is the only one never withdrawn when a date arrives, and the Safety grade drops to D if the shelf has none — because without it, every other jar is what gets raided.
Should I save for multiple goals at once or one at a time?
Fund the nearest deadline first. Take two goals, $1,000 needed in ten months and $1,000 needed in twenty. Separate calculators say $100 plus $50, so $150 a month. Fund the first goal alone and it is done in month ten, after which the same $100 rolls onto the second and finishes it in month twenty: both deadlines met on $100 a month. The saving comes from goals finishing and freeing their money up, which no single-goal calculator can see. On the default five-jar shelf the gap is $1,731 against $975.
How much should I save each month to reach a goal by a date?
Subtract what you have, then spread the rest over the months you have left, with interest working in your favour. Reaching $6,000 from $2,500 in nine months takes $375 a month at 4.10% APY. A $1,500 laptop from nothing in four months takes $373. The tool also shows the same number per paycheck, because that is what you actually set up: $375 a month is $172.88 every two weeks or $86.44 a week. Note that a dated jar has to be full by the 1st of its deadline month, since the thing usually gets paid for at the start.
How much should I save each month for a vacation or a wedding?
For a vacation, a $4,000 trip ten months out with $500 already saved needs $343 a month at 4.10% APY, which is $158.34 every two weeks. For a wedding, The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study puts the 2025 average at about $34,000 excluding the engagement ring; starting from $6,000 with twenty months to go, that is $1,336 a month, or $616.52 a paycheck on a biweekly cycle. The Engaged Couple preset runs exactly that alongside a honeymoon and an emergency fund on $2,000 a month, and all three land on time with a $1,711 minimum.
How much should I save for a car?
For the down payment, treat it as a dated goal: $8,000 in eighteen months from $1,000 already saved is $375 a month. For the running costs, treat them as bills. AAA 2025 Your Driving Costs study puts the total cost of owning and operating a new vehicle at $11,577 a year, of which maintenance, repair and tires run 11.04 cents a mile — about $1,656 a year at 15,000 miles, which is the figure the car-repairs category starts from. Insurance is usually billed every six months, so it belongs in a recurring jar rather than a monthly line.
When should I start a Christmas sinking fund?
The first week of January, because the level amount is set by how many months are left. A $1,000 holiday fund started right after the holidays runs $89 a month over the eleven months to December; started in January proper it is $82 over twelve; started in September it is $332. The National Retail Federation put average holiday spending at $890.49 per person in 2025, so $1,000 is a realistic target rather than a generous one. The default shelf shows the late-start problem directly: a Christmas jar with $200 in it and three months to go needs $265 a month, then drops to $83 once the cycle resets.
Where should I keep my sinking funds?
In cash, at a rate that is not insulting, for anything inside three to five years. The FDIC national average for savings accounts was 0.38% APY on data through July 2026, while the best high-yield accounts paid 4.00% to 4.21% that September. On the default shelf that difference is $70 against $760 of interest over 24 months on identical deposits. Several banks let one account hold named buckets, which maps onto this shelf one-to-one. Savings interest is taxable as ordinary income. Past five years, inflation starts to outweigh the safety, which is where investing enters the argument.