fbpx
save money every day

How Much Money Should You Save Per Day?

There are several ways of estimating how much you should save per day. Most people go for a percentage of their income, which is fine and well, but in my opinion rather arbitrary. In this article, we’ll do it more thoroughly.

Here’s the short answer:

Generally, you should save 20% of your annual income. To get it in daily terms, divide it by 365. For example, if you make $50,000 annually, you should save $50,000 * 20% / 365 = $27.4 per day.

But you’re not looking for the general answer; you’re looking for the specific answer to your situation. Let’s get into the details, and figure out how much YOU should save per day!

I’ve written about this on the yearly timeframe as well, which you can read here: How Much Should YOU Save Per Year?

How Much YOU Should Save Per Day

The answer depends on several factors. The two most important ones are:

  • Your long-term financial goals (retirement-related goals)
  • Your short-term financial goals. (trips, a new car, etc.)

Let me give you examples of both:

Examples of financial goals:

My long-term financial goal is to retire at the age of 65 with an annual income of $85,000 + all the benefits from social security etc.

My short-term financial goals are to take my family of 4 on an international holiday one week every year and buy a new car every 10 years. I would also like to eat a fancy dinner once every second month with my wife.

As the first step in calculating how much you should save daily, write down YOUR long and short-term financial goals.

Oh, and to figure out the required savings/investments for your desired annual income during retirement, just divide the income by 0.04.

From goals to daily savings targets:

Now that you’ve written down your goals, we need to figure out how much to save per day to reach them.

The long-term goal is rather straightforward to calculate: Divide your desired annual income by 0.04. The answer is how much you need to save by the time you retire.

In my example of wanting to retire on $85,000 a year, I need to save up $85,000 / 0.04 = $2,125,000 by the time I retire. We will turn this into a daily savings target in the next section.

The short-term goals are a bit trickier and variable. However, here are some general guidelines to follow:

  • The cost of travel is on average $271 per day. In my example of wanting to travel one week per year, I’ll need $1,897. (source)
  • A new car will cost me roughly $10K. Over a ten-year period, this is $1,000 per year.
  • I “guestimate” that a fancy dinner for my wife and I will cost me roughly $200. Doing this every other month totals $1,200.

In total, my short-term goals will cost me $4,097 yearly. Divided by 365, this comes out to $11.2 per day.

In other words, I need to save $11.2 daily to reach my short-term financial goals.

Summary of goals-section:

I need to save $11.2 per day to reach my short-term financial goals, and I need to have $2,125,000 saved up by the time I’m 65.

How Much To Save Per Day For Retirement:

This depends largely on your age. For this reason, I’ll give you a bunch of different examples in hopes that one of them fits your situation.

But first, I’ll continue with the example from the previous section:

My retirement goal is to save up $2,125,000 by age 65, and I’m currently 24. This gives me 41 years to save.

Since saving money can’t make you rich, we must invest it. Here’s an example of how much more powerful investing is rather than just saving:

  • To save up 2.125 million USD in 41 years WITHOUT investing, I need to put away $142 every day.
  • To save up 2.125 million USD in 41 years by investing my savings, I only need to put away $26 every day.

Investing instead of saving, over a 41-year timeframe, is 5.4 times more powerful!

In the next few sections, I’ll give you 30 examples, depending on how long until you retire.

Daily savings for retirement in 40 years:

Assuming a 7% annual return, which equals 0.018539% per day, this is how much you need to save/invest per day to reach your goals:

Daily SavingTarget Savings
$33$2,500,000
$30$2,250,000
$26.5$2,000,000
$23$1,750,000
$20$1,500,000
$16.5$1,250,000
$15.25$1,150,000
$13.25$1,000,000
$11.25$850,000
$10$750,000

Daily savings for retirement in 30 years:

Assuming a 7% annual return, which equals 0.018539% per day, this is how much you need to save/invest per day to reach your goals:

Daily SavingTarget Savings
$70$2,500,000
$63$2,250,000
$56$2,000,000
$49$1,750,000
$42$1,500,000
$35$1,250,000
$33$1,150,000
$28$1,000,000
$24$850,000
$21$750,000

Daily savings for retirement in 20 years:

Assuming a 7% annual return, which equals 0.018539% per day, this is how much you need to save/invest per day to reach your goals:

Daily SavingTarget Savings
$162$2,500,000
$146$2,250,000
$129$2,000,000
$113$1,750,000
$97$1,500,000
$81$1,250,000
$75$1,150,000
$65$1,000,000
$55$850,000
$49$750,000

Daily savings for retirement in 10 years:

Assuming a 7% annual return, which equals 0.018539% per day, this is how much you need to save/invest per day to reach your goals:

Daily SavingTarget Savings
$479$2,500,000
$431$2,250,000
$383$2,000,000
$335$1,750,000
$288$1,500,000
$240$1,250,000
$221$1,150,000
$192$1,000,000
$163$850,000
$144$750,000

The math and programming used in the calculations:

If you’re a numbers guy and want to double-check the math, here’s what I did:

  1. Used the formula for calculating the sum of finite geometric series to define the following function:
    daily_savings = (retirement_target * (daily_returns – 1)) / (daily_returns^(number_of_days) – 1)
  2. Make a list of all the retirement targets.
  3. Loop through the function for all the goals for each time period using elements from the list as arguments in the function.

Conclusion: Add It All Together!

You’ve written out your long-term and short-term financial goals. Adding together the cost of your short-term goals and dividing them by the appropriate time factor gave you the required daily savings.

From the examples above you estimate how much you need to save per day for retirement, given a 0.018539% daily return (=7% per year).

Now you need to add those together, and you have the total amount you should save per day. To complete my running example, here are my numbers:

Short-Term Goals: $11.2 per day.

Long-Term Goals: $26 per day
.

In total, I should save $37.2 per day.

If you’re unable to save as much per day as you should, you need to read my article giving you The 4 Steps To Save A Lot Of Money Fast. They’re easier than you might think.

Suggested reading:

That’s it for today. Happy saving!
– Oskar