50/30/20 Budget Calculator
The three targets, and how far your actual spending sits from them.
Rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, transport, insurance, minimum debt payments.
Eating out, subscriptions, holidays, hobbies — anything you could stop without consequence.
Pension contributions, savings, and anything above the minimum on a debt.
Thin
- Needs target (50%)
- 1,750.00 — 150.00 over$
- Wants target (30%)
- 1,050.00 — 150.00 under$
- Savings target (20%)
- 700.00 — 300.00 under$
- Needs as a share of pay
- 54.29%
- Wants as a share of pay
- 25.71%
- Unallocated each month
- 300.00$
- Saved in a year at this rate
- 4,800.00$
Take-home pay means after tax and after any pension taken at source. If your pension is deducted before you see it, count it as savings and add it back to income for a fair comparison.
Every tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.
The 50/30/20 rule allocates half of take-home pay to needs, thirty percent to wants and twenty percent to savings or extra debt repayment. It is a starting benchmark rather than a prescription, and housing costs are what most often break it.
How to use 50/30/20 Budget Calculator
- Enter your take-home pay. After tax, and after any pension deducted at source. Use an average month if your income varies.
- Split last month across the three buckets. Needs are what you cannot stop paying, wants are everything you could, and savings includes anything above a minimum debt payment.
- Read the gaps. Each target line shows the amount you are over or under, so you know where the correction has to come from.
About budgeting
The value of the 50/30/20 split is that it is simple enough to remember and act on, which is a genuine advantage over a detailed budget nobody maintains past February. Its weakness is that the proportions assume a relationship between housing costs and income that no longer holds in many places. Where rent alone consumes half of take-home pay, the needs bucket is full before groceries or transport are counted, and no amount of discipline in the other two categories fixes that. The honest reading in that case is that the rule has diagnosed a structural problem rather than a behavioural one. Two details change the numbers more than people expect. The first is which side of the line a category sits on: a subscription, a phone contract or a car payment can plausibly be argued into either bucket, and the split becomes meaningless if the argument is settled by whichever answer looks better. The test worth applying is whether the payment would continue if your income stopped. The second is the treatment of debt. Minimum payments are a need because missing them carries consequences, but anything above the minimum belongs in the savings bucket, since paying down a balance at twenty percent interest improves your position faster than saving at four percent. That reframing often moves a budget that looks like it saves nothing into one that is saving a reasonable share, which is a more accurate picture of what is actually happening.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a need rather than a want?
Does paying off debt count as savings?
What if my rent alone is more than 50 percent?
Should I use gross or take-home pay?
Where did the 50/30/20 rule come from?
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