Where a starting balance and a monthly contribution land over the next 40 years.
Assumption basis: S&P 500 long-run returns · BLS CPI7% is the long-run S&P 500 average after inflation is left in nominal terms.
Most people save more as pay rises. Set 0 to hold it flat.
Growth of $2.4M exceeds the $974k you put in: past roughly the halfway point of a horizon this long, returns do more of the work than contributions. In today’s dollars the same balance is $1.6M.
Measured in future dollars. A million in 30 years is not a million today, which is what the toggle above is for.
A constant return applied monthly. Real markets do not deliver an average year: a sequence with the same average but a bad first decade lands materially lower, which this projection cannot show. Taxes and fees are not modeled. Nothing here is a forecast.
This answers one question in isolation. The playbook puts your answers in order and tells you which one to act on first.
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