Understanding and Controlling Your Finances

Basic Compound Interest Calculator

This calculator helps you to understand how much money you can accumulate by saving small amounts of money each week in an account. Enter the amount you plan to add to your account each week, and the expected interest rate. The calculator will show you the amount that will accumulate in the account over different time spans.

[Note: This calculator does not take taxes into account. More on the tax topic here.]

Weekly contribution - Enter a small amount of money that you can imagine yourself being able to put aside on a weekly basis. If you can only imagine $5 per week, try it just to see what happens over the long haul.
Interest Rate - Enter the interest rate you expect to earn. To give you two ideas, current CD rates run between 5% and 6%, while the stock market has returned an average of 10% or so for many years. 12% is an amount that a shrewd investor might hope to get over a long period of time. For 6%, enter 6 in the entry field.
Click this button to calculate the account value.
Year	Value
1 year value - This is the total value of your account at the end of 1 year.
2 year value - This is the total value of your account at the end of 2 years.
3 year value - And so on...
4 year value
5 year value
10 year value
15 year value
20 year value
30 year value
40 year value
50 year value

Run several examples to convince yourself that even small amounts of money, accumulated a week at a time, can add up to huge totals over the course of time. This simple realization forms the basis of retirement planning, saving for a child's college education, building a down payment for a new house, etc.

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