Make room for what matters
Education Planner
College fees rise faster than most prices, and an education goal has a deadline you cannot move. Enter today's cost and when it is needed, and this planner shows the fee you would actually face and what funding it would take from here.
Enter your details below. Your estimate updates as you explore, and you can check the calculation behind it.
Your planning workspaceMake the numbers yours.
Start with the defaults, then adjust your details.
View your estimateHow this planner works
Parents planning for a course years away, and anyone funding their own further study. It is most useful when you have a specific course in mind, because the current fee is something you can look up rather than guess.
Method
Inflation-adjusted goal
The target is the future cost, not today's price, because that is what will actually have to be paid. The default inflation rate is higher than the general default used elsewhere on the site, since education costs in India have historically outpaced general prices — and unlike most goals, an education deadline is fixed by a child's age and cannot be pushed back to absorb a shortfall.
Today's cost is grown to the year the course starts, at the education inflation rate you set. This is the step that matters most: planning against the current fee is the single most common way an education goal comes out underfunded.
Your existing savings are grown over the same period at the assumed return, and your monthly contribution is projected alongside them. Together those give what you are on track to have when the fee falls due.
The shortfall is the difference. The required monthly contribution is what reaching the future cost would take from here — the figure to act on, rather than the headline cost.
The inflation impact is shown separately so the rise is visible as its own number. Over eighteen years at 8%, roughly three quarters of the eventual fee is price increases rather than the course itself.
Every rate is yours to change and each is labelled with whether you set it or we defaulted it. Nothing here forecasts what fees will actually do.
What this does not tell you
- The inflation rate is an assumption and the answer is very sensitive to it. Over eighteen years the difference between 6% and 10% roughly doubles the target, so it is worth trying both rather than trusting one.
- Education costs vary enormously by institution and country, and past fee increases at one college say little about another. The current cost you enter matters more than any rate.
- An education loan is not modelled. Many families fund part of a course through borrowing, which changes what has to be saved in advance.
- Scholarships, grants and financial aid are not counted, and neither is any contribution the student might make themselves.
- A steady annual return is assumed. With a fixed deadline that is a real limitation — a fall in the final year cannot be waited out, which is why many people reduce risk as the date approaches.
- Exchange rates are ignored. For a course abroad, currency movement can matter as much as fee inflation.
Frequently asked questions
Calculators behind this plan
This planner is built from the same calculations these calculators run. Open one to look at a single piece of the plan in more detail.
Goal-Based SIP Calculator
Start from the amount you need and work backwards to the monthly investment it requires.
Open calculatorInflation Calculator
See what today's money would cost in future, and what it would still buy if left uninvested.
Open calculatorStep-up SIP Calculator
Model a SIP that increases by a fixed percentage every year and compare it with a level SIP.
Open calculatorSIP Calculator
Project what a fixed monthly mutual fund SIP could grow to at an assumed rate of return.
Open calculatorOther planners
All plannersEmergency Fund Planner
Size an emergency fund against your essential monthly spending, see how many months you are already covered for, and what closing the gap would take each month.
Open plannerPrepay or Invest Planner
Compare paying extra into a loan against investing the same money, with the interest saved and the projected corpus side by side under assumptions you set.
Open plannerHome Purchase Planner
See what a property might cost by the time you buy, what the deposit would take to save, and what the loan on the remainder would cost each month.
Open plannerRetirement Planner
Work out the corpus your retirement needs, what your current saving is projected to reach, and the monthly contribution that would close the gap.
Open planner
Disclaimer
These planners are provided for general information and planning only, and are not investment, tax or legal advice. Every figure is an estimate produced from the assumptions you enter, each of which is listed on the page — they are not forecasts of markets, inflation, property prices or fees, none of which can be predicted. Market-linked investments can lose value and past returns say nothing about future ones. Nothing here recommends a product or a course of action. For advice on your own situation, speak to a qualified professional, several of whom you can consult on Finvestalk.