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The 50/30/20 budget, on your numbers.
Half to needs, a third to wants, a fifth to saving. Put your take-home pay in to see what that is in real money, and what the month actually looked like.
Try it with your own numbers
The three shares are a common starting point, not personal financial advice. A month with high rent and no debt is a different month from one with low rent and a loan, and both are normal.
These tools do arithmetic on the numbers you type and nothing else. They are here to help you work something out, not to tell you what to do, and what is right varies from one person to the next.
Saving Diary is a personal record keeping app. What it suggests is general guidance, not personal financial advice, and it does not replace a licensed financial adviser.
A starting split, not a rule.
50/30/20 is a widely used way of carving up take-home pay: half for the things you have to pay, thirty per cent for the things you choose to, twenty per cent put away. It is popular because it is easy to hold in your head, not because it is right for everybody. Treat it as a first draft of a budget rather than a verdict on one, and change the shares the moment your month tells you to.
How the numbers are worked out.
Three multiplications, then three subtractions. That is the whole thing.
- Start with take-home pay, which is what actually reaches you rather than what you are paid on paper.
- Half of it is the needs share, thirty per cent is the wants share, and twenty per cent is the saving share.
- If you filled in what the month actually looked like, each of those is taken off the matching share. A positive difference means that part of the month came in over the split.
- Anything left once all three actual figures are taken out of take-home pay is money the month has not accounted for.
A worked example.
The same numbers this page starts with, run through the same steps.
What went in
- Take-home pay each month
- 3,000
- Spent on needs
- 1,650
- Spent on wants
- 800
- Put away
- 400
What comes out
- Needs
- 1,500
- Wants
- 900
- Saving
- 600
- Not accounted for
- 150
Every figure here is calculated by the same code the calculator above runs, so the example and the tool can never disagree.
Three shares are easy. Knowing which is which is not.
The split takes a second to work out and a month to check. What makes it usable is a record of where the money actually went, sorted the same way every month.
FAQ
Good to know.
What is the 50/30/20 rule?
A way of dividing take-home pay: 50 per cent to needs, 30 per cent to wants, 20 per cent to saving and paying down debt beyond the minimum. It is a starting split people use because it is simple to remember, not a rule anybody is required to follow.
What counts as a need and what counts as a want?
A need is something the month does not work without: rent, food, transport, bills, the minimum on anything owed. A want is what you would cut first if the month got tight. The line moves between people, and the split only tells you something useful if you draw it the same way every month.
What if 50/30/20 does not fit my month?
Then it does not fit, and that is common rather than a failure. Rent alone is over half of take-home pay in plenty of cities. Use the shares as a reference point, not a target, and pay more attention to the direction each one moves over a few months than to hitting the numbers.
Other tools
A calculator answers once. An app answers every month.
Know where your money goes.
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