Maturity value of regular monthly deposits.
Maturity value
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Total deposited
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Interest earned
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How regular saving snowballs
A recurring deposit is the discipline of putting a fixed amount away every month and letting each instalment compound until the plan matures. The quiet power is timing. Your very first deposit earns profit for the entire term, while the deposit you make in the final month barely earns anything at all. Add up those overlapping growth periods and the total profit ends up far larger than a flat interest calculation would suggest. This calculator treats each deposit as made at the start of the month, the annuity-due convention, so every rupee earns a full month of profit from the moment it lands. That is the more generous and, for most bank recurring schemes, the more realistic assumption.
Reading the three numbers it gives you
The tool returns three figures, and the gap between them is the point. Total deposited is simply your monthly amount multiplied by the number of months, the money that came out of your own pocket. Maturity value is what the account is worth at the end once compounding has done its work. Interest earned is the difference, the reward for parking money you did not touch. Watching how the interest portion grows as you stretch the term is the most useful thing you can do here, because it shows compounding is far more sensitive to time than to the size of any single deposit.
PKR 20,000 a month for five years at 12%
Use the defaults: PKR 20,000 deposited monthly for five years, with a 12% annual rate compounding each month. That is 60 deposits, and the monthly rate works out to 1%. The future value of an annuity due formula turns those 60 instalments into the maturity figure below.
| Step | Value |
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The full bar is the maturity value. The grey base is the money you put in; the teal cap on top is the profit compounding added.
The tax this gross figure ignores
Here is the practical catch, and it is easy to miss. The maturity value above is a gross figure. In Pakistan the profit you earn on a bank deposit is taxable, collected by the bank as withholding tax under the profit-on-debt rules before the money reaches you. This is where the filer versus non-filer divide hits savers directly. The withholding rate applied to a filer, a person on the Active Taxpayer List, is far lower than the rate applied to a non-filer. On the figures in the broader tax framework this site uses, a filer faces roughly 15% on profit while a non-filer can be charged around 35%, more than double. On the PKR 449,727 of interest in the example, that difference is not small change. Because these rates are reset through the annual Finance Act, confirm the current profit-on-debt rate for your filer status with the FBR, and read this calculator's output as the pre-tax balance. The single cheapest move a saver can make is to get on the ATL before the profit is paid.
Should I treat this as a guaranteed return?
Only loosely. Many bank recurring schemes quote a profit rate that can be revised, and Islamic deposit accounts share an expected profit rather than pay fixed interest, so the actual rate may differ from the one you enter. Use the calculator with the rate your bank is offering today, and revisit the projection if that rate changes. It is a planning estimate, not a contractual promise.
Is a recurring deposit better than a monthly investment plan?
They answer different needs. A recurring deposit gives you a predictable, low-risk balance, which suits a near-term goal where you cannot afford a loss. A monthly investment in a fund or shares carries market risk but has historically delivered higher long-run returns, and it can also be more tax-efficient depending on the instrument. If the goal is two or three years away, the deposit's certainty usually wins; if it is a decade out, the higher-growth route deserves a serious look.