For example, do you want to save enough money over several months or years to pay for a special event like a major vacation, a college degree, a wedding, or a new vehicle? People have all kinds of financial goals, some short-term, some long. Plus, their targeted savings amounts vary greatly, from less than $100 on the low end to many thousands of dollars.

Here are the general steps for turning your savings dreams into reality.

Make a General Plan to Save Money

Decide what you are saving for and write down a general plan to get started. For instance, if you want to buy a used car for cash, research prices and acceptable models to get an accurate idea about how much money you’ll need. Perhaps you realize that the kind of car you want will cost $8,000, and you want to purchase it in 36 months. Take a look at your budget and include a set-aside amount from every paycheck.

Regardless of what you’re saving for, it’s imperative to know how much time you have, how much money you want to accumulate, and whether you can afford the expense. Buying a new home for cash is probably out of the question for most people. However, financing a vacation two years down the road is often a practical goal.

Use a Compound Interest Calculator

Using a simple interest calculator is, as the term implies, simple. Here’s a good one that lets you put in the primary data and arrive at a result relatively quickly.

To use it, you only need a few figures, like the account’s interest rate where you’ll be putting the deposits, the amount you will deposit at each interval, and the number of contributions from beginning to end.

As an example, which we’ll walk through below, suppose you examine your budget and feel comfortable saving $250 per month for a trip, vehicle, or major appliance. Here are the steps for using the calculator to arrive at a total amount you will have in the account after interest and all contributions are accounted for.

• One: Include a starting balance if you have one.
  Realize that many people have a zero beginning balance, but if you have some money in the account already, be sure to put it on the first line of the calculator’s input page. For our example, we will assume a starting balance of $500.
• Two: State the annual interest rate.
  Note that sometimes this figure will be an estimate. For savings and CD accounts, though, it’s typically a specific number. For example, assume an annual interest rate of 5 percent for this hypothetical case.
• Three: Enter the compounding frequency.
  Keep in mind that you might receive monthly, daily, or annual compounding. Assume “monthly” for our test case.
• Four: Enter the length of time.
  This refers to the total number of months, from now, that you will be adding money to the total.
• Five: Enter the payment, whatever it is.
  As noted above, we assume a $250 monthly contribution, which will be our “payment” amount.
• Six: Enter “Payment frequency,” which is monthly in this example, meaning you’ll be making deposits of $250 every month for the life of the program.
• Seven: List the start date.
• Eight: Click on “calculate now” when you’re ready and have filled in all the information. If you left something out, enter it now. If you made an entry error, correct it. When you’re done and want to do another calculation, click on the “Reset values” button, and a new page will appear.

Our Results

In the hypothetical case, where we deposited $250 per month, with a $500 beginning balance, a 5 percent interest rate compounded monthly, and three years of deposits, our final account balance is $10,269.07, which means we can easily buy the $8,000 car we are saving for. So even if inflation causes the price of similar used cars to rise between now and then, we’ll still have more than enough cash to buy one.

Note that in the “Results” panel below the input section, you can see that you made $769 in interest on your monthly contributions and the $500 in the account at the beginning. If you had put the contributions into a cookie jar or safe, you would only have ended up with $9,500 instead of $10,269.

It doesn’t matter if you’re late to the party where retirement savings is concerned. Your 30s is the perfect time to start investing, maxing out employer contributions, and coming up with a plan for your financial future as you get older. With years of wisdom guiding you and more discretionary income to invest, you’re at an advantage. You can get the most out of your retirement savings by following the advice given here. Best of all, you don’t need to give up your favorite things to afford to do so, either!

The Best Time to Start Saving for Retirement is Today

Many financial experts state that the average 30-year-old should have the equivalent of one year’s salary saved for retirement. If you don’t, you’re like a lot of people your age. You may feel the need to catch up, and that’s ok if you can afford to save more now that you’re older. However, if you have nothing saved, imagine how you’ll feel in ten years when you still have nothing put away for retirement. Every penny counts, and you’ll see how easy it is to save without sacrificing the quality of your current lifestyle to make it happen.

Here’s how to make saving for retirement in your 30s effortless:

Automate Your Savings

Automate your savings so you don’t think about it; out of sight and out of mind. You can’t miss something you don’t have available to spend, right? When you automatically put away a specific amount of money into your retirement accounts, it makes it harder for you to withdraw it. Doing so can mean penalties, and no one wants that! Determine how much you can reasonably afford to put toward retirement and set up automatic transfers. It saves you time, money, and energy.

Save Just One More Percent

Aim for saving one percent more than you’re already saving. Make it a challenge to save a slightly higher percentage than you first started out saving. See what expenditures you can cut back on so you can invest more into your retirement fund. You’d be surprised how much easier it is to reduce your spending than try to live on a pittance as a senior citizen. So tighten your belt, grip your wallet, and make your hard-earned money work doubly hard for you.

Increase Savings Contributions with Raises

Take all raises and save them for retirement. Whatever money you’ve been paid extra for the work you do, take it and boost your retirement savings. Those were funds you weren’t counting on receiving, and you can easily manage to live on your previous salary without giving up things to remain comfortable. Instead, you can use the extra money you earned to give you a momentary feeling of excitement or provide you with more security during your Golden Years.

Reinvest Your Tax Refund

Invest your income tax refund to maximize savings. Like your raises, it’s money that you weren’t necessarily expecting to have available for spending. It’s a considerable amount to put toward retirement when you have little to nothing saved. It’s easy to acknowledge that a new big-screen TV isn’t worth as much to you as the peace of mind as a senior when work opportunities are scarce.

Invest Other Surprise Money

Use your windfalls to secure a brighter future for yourself. Anytime that you have money given to you that you weren’t expecting, you can do a few things with it. You can use it to buy something you want. You can pay down debt, so you have more money to save for retirement, or you can save it immediately with no thought of doing anything else. It’s up to you to determine the best option based on your current needs and household budget. It’s yet another way to save more for retirement fast.

Maxing Out 401(k) Contributions

Max out 401K contributions. Work for an employer that’s invested in your future. Find out what the limits are for 401K contributions, and max them out. It’s an excellent way to grow your nest egg because you’ll have your money and your employer’s money to live off of during retirement. If you follow no other piece of advice listed here, carefully choose your employer based on the benefits package offered to you. You’ll save a reasonable sum of money that way.

The good thing about saving for retirement for the first time in your thirties is that you’ve gotten a lot of the significant life events that you’ll experience out of the way. That means that you’ve had more time to establish yourself in the workforce, too, and earn significantly more money than you did while in your 20s. You’ve also gotten comfortable with what you can reasonably afford to spend and save, too. Think of saving for retirement as investing in your financial future.

To see how your contributions are adding up, you can access tools that help you make sense of how the interest is accumulating. There are separate calculators on our website for simple interest and compound interest. They’re free to use and very beneficial in figuring out the ideal rate of savings for you.

Calculate Your Earned Interest with Our Convenient Calculator Tool

Getting a visual picture of what you’re saving and earning in interest is made more accessible with our helpful calculator tool. You can access it by visiting our calculator and inputting your data into it. It gives you up-to-date information so you can visualize what you’re working towards building for yourself every step of the way. A brighter future is made with every dollar that you save and earn interest off of today. Even the most minor contributions add up over time.