Final answer:
To accumulate $10,000 in 3 years in an account with a 2.5% interest rate compounded monthly, you need to deposit approximately $9284.95 today.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine how much money should be deposited today in an account that earns 2.5% compounded monthly so that it will accumulate to $10,000 in 3 years, we use the formula for the present value of an investment compounded monthly:

Where:
- PV is the present value (the initial amount to be deposited).
- FV is the future value ($10,000 in this case).
- r is the annual interest rate (2.5% or 0.025).
- n is the number of times interest is compounded per year (12 for monthly).
- t is the number of years (3 in this case).
First, we convert the interest rate from a percentage to a decimal by dividing by 100:
r = 2.5% / 100 = 0.025
Now we can calculate:

Therefore, the amount of money that should be deposited today is approximately $9284.95.