- Savings rate is the percentage of income you save, not the dollar amount — it lets you compare progress regardless of income level.
- 20% of take-home income is a common healthy-progress benchmark; FI/RE planning often targets 30–50%+.
- Use take-home (after-tax) income for the most accurate rate.
- This is the same calculation Hunch runs automatically from your real transactions each month.
How the savings rate calculator works
Enter your monthly income and monthly expenses. The calculator subtracts expenses from income to find what you're saving, then expresses that as a percentage of income — your savings rate. If you set a savings target, it also estimates how many months it'll take to reach it at your current rate.
The math: savings rate and time-to-target
Savings rate = (income − expenses) ÷ income, expressed as a percentage. Time to a savings target is simply the target amount divided by your monthly savings amount (income minus expenses), assuming a flat savings pace with no investment growth factored in — a conservative, easy-to-verify estimate.
Worked example
On $6,000/month take-home income with $4,500 in expenses, you're saving $1,500/month — a 25% savings rate. To reach a $15,000 emergency fund target from zero, that's 10 months at the current pace. Trim expenses to $4,200 and the savings rate climbs to 30%, cutting the timeline to about 8 months.
Key terms
- Savings rate
- The percentage of your income that goes to savings rather than spending, calculated as (income − expenses) ÷ income.
- Take-home income
- Income after taxes and payroll deductions — what actually lands in your bank account.
- Savings target
- A specific dollar goal, such as an emergency fund or a down payment, that you want to reach by a certain date.
- FI/RE
- Financial Independence, Retire Early — a movement built around very high savings rates to shorten the time to financial independence.