Months until your deposit is ready with current contribution.

A house deposit is usually the biggest savings goal a household attempts. The timeline from starting to saving to mortgage application often runs 2-5 years for first-time buyers. This calculator shows exactly when your plan reaches the deposit threshold based on current contribution pace.

Three levers shift the timelinecurrent savings (head start reduces time proportionally), monthly contribution (bigger = faster, linear relationship at short horizons), interest rate (small effect in first 2 years, meaningful effect beyond). Beyond these, reducing target via smaller property or higher deposit-to-property ratio is the other lever.

The math uses monthly compounding iteration until balance reaches target. Interest contribution grows over longer timelines but typically accounts for 3-8% of deposit at 3-5 year horizons with 4% savings rates. Most deposit comes from contributions, not interest — which means consistency matters more than rate optimisation.

How to use it

Enter target deposit, current savings, monthly contribution, and annual interest rate. The tool calculates months to target and shows realistic timeline.

What the result means

Months to target is when your balance first crosses the deposit threshold. Years/months format makes the planning horizon readable. Final balance confirms the threshold is reached. Total contributed vs final shows interest contribution.

Planning tool, not financial advice.

A worked example

Try the defaults: target deposit of 40,000, current savings of 8,000, monthly contribution of 700, annual interest rate of 4%. The tool returns 3y 6mo. You can adjust any input and the result updates as you type — no submit button, no reload. That's the real power here: seeing how sensitive the output is to one or two assumptions.

What moves the number most

The result responds to Target Deposit, Current Savings, Monthly Contribution, and Annual Interest Rate. Hours and hourly rate both appear to matter equally, but in practice the rate is the bigger lever because it applies to every hour. A modest rate uplift beats a modest hour increase almost every time.

The formula behind this

Iterates monthly compound growth with contributions until target reached. Capped at 100 years. Everything the calculator does is shown in the formula box below, so you can check the math against your own spreadsheet if you want.

The annual review habit

Plug new numbers in every year. Income changes, expenses shift, markets move. A plan that isn't revisited quietly drifts out of date. This tool is cheap to re-run — so re-run it.

What this doesn't capture

Real plans get re-run against new information every year or two. The result here is a reasonable direction, not a destination. Treat it as a starting point for thinking, not a commitment to a specific future.