Budget Calculator
Split your after-tax income into needs, wants, and savings using the 50/30/20 rule — or set your own percentages when the standard split doesn't fit your rent or your goals.
Your numbers
What goes in each bucket
The buckets are defined by necessity, not by category. The test for a "need" is: would serious consequences follow within a month of not paying it?
- Needs (50%): rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, insurance premiums, minimum debt payments, transport to work, childcare, prescriptions. Note that minimum debt payments are needs — missing them has consequences — but extra payments belong in the savings bucket.
- Wants (30%): restaurants, streaming, travel, hobbies, the nicer apartment beyond what you need, the newer car beyond basic transport. This bucket being explicit is the rule's real innovation — it's permission to spend guilt-free, with a boundary.
- Savings & extra debt (20%): emergency fund contributions, retirement accounts, investments, and every debt dollar beyond the minimums.
The most common sorting mistake is putting the entire grocery and housing bill in "needs" at their current levels. The rule's originators were stricter: the need is basic housing and basic food; the increment above basic is a want. You don't have to be that rigorous, but knowing the distinction helps when the needs bucket overflows.
When 50/30/20 doesn't fit — and what to do
In high-rent metros, housing alone can eat 40%+ of take-home pay, making a 50% needs cap unreachable. On lower incomes, needs are a structurally larger share — that's not a budgeting failure, it's arithmetic. The presets above include a 60/20/20 variant for exactly this, and the custom option lets you set any split. The point of the rule isn't the specific numbers; it's that wants and savings both get an explicit, protected share. A budget where savings only gets "whatever's left" reliably saves nothing. The history and adaptations of the rule are covered in our 50/30/20 article.
Worked example
Take-home pay of $5,000/month under the standard split: $2,500 for needs, $1,500 for wants, $1,000 for savings and extra debt payments. That $1,000 is where your other goals plug in: perhaps $400 to an emergency fund until it's full, $300 extra to the highest-rate card (the debt payoff calculator shows what that buys), and $300 to retirement. When the emergency fund completes, its $400 rolls to the next goal — the split stays constant while the destinations evolve.
Questions people ask
Gross or net income?
Net — what hits your account. One nuance: if your employer pre-deducts a 401(k) contribution, that money is already "savings," so count it toward the 20% and you're closer to target than you think.
Is 20% enough to save?
For someone starting mid-career or carrying expensive debt, more is better if livable. But 20% saved consistently from age 25–30 onward puts a typical earner on a reasonable retirement path. Consistency beats intensity — a 30% rate you abandon in March loses to 15% you sustain for a decade.
Where do irregular expenses go?
Annual insurance, car repairs, holidays: divide the yearly total by 12 and treat it as a monthly need, parked in a sinking fund. The savings goal calculator handles the arithmetic for specific targets.