New MSE Savings Calculators

reehsetin

just used it seems to work very well, very handy
only thing id like to see is a comparison thing yes i do know you can just enter the various calculations in but just for asthetics, to have everything side by side might be nice

Kaz2904

I'm getting the red x in a box.
When I did the how long will it take me to save up for something it didn't compute. I put saving £140 a month at 6% for a goal of £5300 and it said 1 month- now I like that answer!

Mandles

i use firefox and there did not be a submit button so it did not work im afraid.

finallydebtfree!!

viktory wrote: »

I have tried the savings calculator and the one that estimates how long it will take to save up for something appears to have a glitch (unless it's me LOL).

I said I need to save £5000
I have £50
I can save £50
At 5% with no tax.

It then said that To save up £50, with £50 saved will take no months It even says that same if I say I want to save £100,000.

I get the same. tried all different figures but the outcome was still the same. Great idea though!!

sallyb17

The savings calculator worked for me (Internet Explorer), but I suggest it might be nice to show a breakdown of the total. For example, you could say "In 5 years' time you will have £xxxx, of which £xxxx is original investment and of which £xxxx is interest. It would help encourage people by showing how their savings could grow.

I didn't see an 'ISA calculator', but I would suggest that any ISA calculator is not limited to £250 a month, unless it is strictly a 'cash ISA' caclulator. The total ISA annual limit is £7000 (£583 per month). I'm pleased to see that you haven't restricted the percentage interest earned to two figures either (some savings cacluators do this) - last time I checked, my S&S ISA has returned 110% over the last 12 months and so far this year has performed an astonishing 129% already :j , although it did go down a bit on Friday I still invest some of my ISA allowance in cash though, at a sure but steady 6.21%.

I get the red box on the "How long will it take me to save up for something", but I input £50000 with £1500, saving £200 a month and it says: To save up £200, by saving £200 a month,
it will take you 0 months."

But what a nice surprise to see a MSE calculator! Well done, Martin, and I'm sure it will be a great scucess once the little technical issues are ironed out x :beer:

sallyb17

Sorry, I meant to ask in the previous post - are you are also planning a mortgage calculator that shows how many years and how much interest you can save by overpaying?

PasturesNew

It seems to have a lag on the first month's savings/interest.
As if the interest is added the day after the month is up. Which is understandable, but a shame.

e.g.
Say you have 0.01 to start with
You will save £1000/month
After 1 month you will have: £1001.01
After 2 months you will have: £2004.08

So it doesn't calculate the interest on the first month's amount I suspect.

MushyPeas

Hiya, just had a quick play around and looked at it from an accessibility point of view with using keyboard and tabbing. I was wondering, could you have a link on the site that takes you straight to main content? Also I was unable to tab and select the 'how much' button.

Brill idea though

jamesd

Cash ISA calculator. There's an image placeholder instead of a button. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/HowMuch2.gif seems not to exist - gets a site error page when I paste it into the URL bar to try to view it.

The future value calculation for 100 a month for 10 years at 9% gets a result of 18,971.87 when a different future value calculator that I use produces a result of 19,496.56 and says it assumes payments at the start of the month. I assume the tool here assumes end of the month. The difference is substantial enough to make handling or at least disclosing this timing appropriate so people can see why they get different future values.

It'd be nice to have a link to this future value calculator that could fill in the values and calculate the answer so you can link to it from a forum discussion to show the result.

Switching to the how long will it take to save up for something calculator, I paste 18,971.87 into the how much you need to save field, 0 as initial, 100 a month and 9% interest rate and click the image placeholder and get "To save up £NaN, by saving £100 a month, it will take you 0 months." Might be an idea to strip the commas from the input fields before evaluating them.

Removing the comma, the result is "To save up £18971.87, by saving £100 a month, it will take you 10 years and 0 months." So the two calculators are at least consistent.

Not so good when it comes to the I'm saving up for calculator, though, it fails the consistency test. 18971.87 to save, have 0, interest rate 9%, 10 years, 0 months, "To have £18971.87 in savings after 10 years and 0 months, you should save £89.73 a month". Nope. Not consistent with the 100 the other calculators say it needs. And not consistent with paying in at the start of the month, either, that would take 97.31 a month according to my other future value calculator. This one seems to be broken.

sallyb17 wrote: »

Sorry, I meant to ask in the previous post - are you are also planning a mortgage calculator that shows how many years and how much interest you can save by overpaying?

Interesting question. A savings calculator that showed you how much you gain or lose by overpaying a mortgage instead of saving would be useful. Too many people seem to think that overpaying is right even when there are savings accounts paying more than their mortgage interest rate.

tyllwyd

I think it might help to have a bit more infomation to explain what the assumptions are. For example, it says 'what's the interest rate?' which completely threw me until I realised that it was assuming that I was saving in a savings account (not under the matress or whatever). And is it asking for the annual interest, not monthly or daily? And when it asks how much money you have already, is it assuming that this money is sitting in the same account that you are putting your regular savings into?