Goals: plan and project what you're saving for

The Plan section, which includes Goals, is part of Porul Premium, with a 7-day free trial. See Pricing.

The problem

“I want 250,000 in fifteen years” is a wish. To act on it you need to know what to put away each month, and what the amount grows to at a given return. Doing that by hand means compound-interest formulas most people don’t want to do.

How Porul handles it

Porul is a calculator, not an adviser. It works out the numbers from your assumptions. It doesn’t tell you whether a return is realistic or whether a goal is a good idea.

Goals and plans

A goal is what you are saving for: a name, a target amount and a date. Each goal can have one or more plans, the actual ways you are funding it (for example a savings fund and a separate investment fund). The goal adds up its plans.

Create a goal

Tap New goal and fill in a name, a target amount and a timeline. The timeline can be a number of years, months or days, or an exact date. Choose Save Goal, or Save & Add Plan to go straight on to building a plan.

Build a plan

The Plan Builder lets you adjust the numbers and watch the result update as you type:

• Plan coverage: how much of the goal this plan covers, as a percentage or an amount. Useful when several plans share one goal.
• Initial corpus: money already set aside for this plan.
• Monthly investment: what you put in each month. Porul shows the required monthly amount to reach the target, and one tap uses it. It also shows how much surplus you have this month.
• Expected return: your assumed yearly return.
• Yearly step-up: raise your monthly amount by a set percentage each year.

Porul then shows the projected value by the target date, split into what you invested and what it grew by, and whether that lands above or below the target.

How the maths works

• The return is treated as an annual effective rate, so 12 months of growth equal exactly your yearly rate. This is more accurate for savings and investments than dividing the rate by 12, which understates the monthly amount you need.
• Each instalment is counted at the start of the month.
• Projections start today with what the plan currently holds. Past months are not replayed.
• A 0% return is a simple sum of contributions.

The projection is calculated once when you save or edit a plan, using closed-form formulas. Everywhere else in the app, Porul just adds up stored numbers. Your projected value is an estimate based on your assumptions, not a promise.

Keeping a plan up to date

• Add money to a plan from the Budget page. It is recorded as a contribution, and it reduces your monthly surplus. See Budget.
• Update corpus: enter the plan’s current market value when it differs from what you contributed. The plan then shows a Returns (XIRR) breakdown of your actual annualised return.
• Pause and resume monthly contributions for a set period, with an optional resume date. The projection accounts for the pause.
• Plan-only or In action: a goal marked Plan-only is just a calculation; In action means its monthly amount is part of your budget.

Close a goal

When you’re done, close the goal by entering the final amount. It moves to Completed goals and is labelled Achieved or Fell short, with the final figure and the gap to your target.

Example

You want 250,000 in 15 years and expect 8% a year. You start with nothing.

Required monthly amount	about 736
Total you put in over 15 years	132,480 (180 × 736)
Growth	about 117,500

If you had divided 8% by 12 instead, the amount would come out near 718, about 2.5% lower, and you would fall short. That is why Porul uses the effective rate.

Want to start smaller? Set a 5% yearly step-up in the builder. Porul recalculates a lower starting amount that rises by 5% each year and still reaches 250,000.