Skip to content
Savings goal calculator
Say how much you want and when you want it, and the calculator gives you the monthly amount that gets you there — with the probability attached. It answers with a range rather than one confident figure, because a single number about the future is a guess wearing a suit.
What it does
It runs thousands of possible paths at the risk level you choose, and reports the monthly amount needed at three of them: the middle outcome, the one that usually works, and the cautious one. You can add known one-off amounts — an end-of-service payment, a bonus, a property sale — in the year they arrive.
How to read the result
- Plan on the 80% figure, not the middle one. The middle figure is what happens if everything runs about average, and things do not run about average.
- More risk lowers the middle number and widens the spread. It does not simply make the goal cheaper — it makes the outcome less certain, which is why the cautious figure moves the other way.
- The model is slightly optimistic at the extremes. It treats each month as independent, with no mean reversion, no extreme events and no correlation between periods. Real markets have all three.
Does more risk mean saving less?
At the median, yes. At high confidence, no — and the numbers cross. The planner’s four bands, on its default scenario — 50,000 BHD in today’s money over 10 years at 2% inflation (60,950 BHD in future money), nothing saved yet. Monthly contribution required, in dinars:
| Band | Expected return | Volatility | At 50% | At 80% | At 90% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 4% | 6% | 415 | 458 | 481 |
| Balanced | 6.5% | 10% | 367 | 433 | 473 |
| Risk-taker | 8% | 15% | 347 | 445 | 507 |
| Adventurous | 9.5% | 20% | 331 | 462 | 549 |
From Conservative to Adventurous: the median figure falls from 415 to 331, and the 90% figure rises from 481 to 549 — the added volatility outweighs the added return. At 80% the cheapest band is Balanced, neither the riskiest nor the safest.
Why this matters: every other goal calculator implies that more risk always means saving less, which is only true at the median. Someone with a fixed, short-dated goal is given exactly the wrong advice by that implication. The calculator produces this table for your own goal.
For illustration only, and not investment advice. Nothing you enter is saved.
