CD Laddering Calculator

CD laddering means splitting your total investment across several CDs with staggered maturity dates (e.g., 1, 2, 3, and 4 years) instead of putting it all into one CD. As each rung matures, you get access to part of your money and can reinvest it or spend it, without locking up your entire balance in a single long term.

A ladder gives you regular access to a portion of your cash (liquidity) while still capturing the typically higher rates offered on longer terms for the other rungs. A single long CD usually pays more per dollar than a 1-year CD, but locks up 100% of your money; a ladder is a middle ground.

This calculator splits your total investment equally across the rungs you enter, calculates the maturity value of each rung using its own APY and term, then finds the equivalent single annual rate that would have produced the same total ending value as a lump sum invested for the same average time — this is the ladder's blended yield.

No — equal amounts is the simplest and most common approach and what this calculator assumes, but some savers weight rungs differently based on when they expect to need the cash. You can approximate an unequal ladder by adjusting your total and running each rung separately.

The conservative preset (3/6/9/12-month rungs) gives you access to part of your money every 3 months, trading some yield for more frequent liquidity. The moderate preset (1/2/3/4/5-year rungs) spreads terms out further, capturing typically higher long-term CD rates in exchange for less frequent access — closer to the structure most banks show as their default "CD ladder" example.

Most savers either withdraw the matured CD's funds for spending, or roll it into a new long-term CD to keep extending the ladder — for example, after your 1-year CD matures in a 1/2/3/4-year ladder, reinvesting it as a new 4-year CD keeps the ladder going indefinitely with a rung maturing every year.