In savings
$24,333
Opportunity Cost Calculator
See what sitting in a savings account might quietly cost you over time.
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If you had
yrs
%
%
Opportunity cost
$5,054
Your $20,000 could be $5,054 bigger in 5 years.
If invested
$29,387
Difference
$5,054
reckon.tools
How this is calculated
We grow your balance at your savings rate and, separately, at your expected market return, then take the difference.
savings = amount x (1 + rate)^years. The gap between the two is your opportunity cost: the growth you skip by staying in cash.That gap is real money, not a hypothetical. Cash sitting still stays still.
Put idle cash to work with OpenTradeEstimate based on your inputs. Not financial advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
How this opportunity cost calculator works
Opportunity cost is the return you give up by choosing one option over another. For idle cash it is the gap between what your money earns in a savings account and what it could have earned invested.
- Grow your balance at your savings rate over the years you enter.
- Grow the same balance at your expected market return over the same years.
- The difference is your opportunity cost, the growth you skip by waiting.
What return should I use for the market?
A common long-run reference for a broad US stock index is around 7 to 10 percent per year before inflation. That is an average across decades; single years swing hard in both directions.
But what if the market drops right when I need it?
Timing the entry is the part almost nobody gets right. Money you need soon usually should not be invested at all. This is about the longer-horizon cash that is sitting still by default.