50/30/20 Budget Calculator
By the Bureau of Wealth team Updated
This calculator is general information, not financial advice. Check your own figures with the provider or a qualified adviser before acting on them.
Enter your monthly take-home pay to see how the 50/30/20 rule divides it between needs, wants, and savings and extra debt repayments, then check what you spend now against it.
What this calculator assumes
- The split is applied to take-home pay, meaning what reaches your bank account after Income Tax, National Insurance, student loan and workplace pension deductions. It is not applied to your salary before tax.
- The percentages are fixed at 50% for needs, 30% for wants and 20% for savings and extra debt repayments. You cannot change them in the calculator.
- Minimum repayments on loans and credit cards count as needs. Only repayments above the minimum count towards the 20%.
- If you fill in all three optional spending boxes, the calculator shows the difference from each target and any pay left unallocated. If any box is blank, no comparison is shown.
- Irregular costs, such as car insurance paid yearly or a TV licence, are not spread across months for you. Divide them by 12 and add them to the right category.
You might also want to check
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Emergency Fund Calculator
Your 20% savings slice has a first job: work out how big an emergency fund you need and how many months of saving it will take.
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Savings Goal Calculator
Saving for something specific, such as a house deposit? See how much you need to put aside each month to reach it by your deadline.
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Making a Budget That Survives Real Life
Needs taking more than half your pay? The guide shows how to bend the 50/30/20 split without giving up on saving.
How the 50/30/20 split works
The 50/30/20 rule is a simple way to divide your take-home pay. Half goes to needs, 30% to wants and 20% to savings and paying off debt faster. It is a rule of thumb rather than an official standard, and its value is that it gives you a quick benchmark for whether your spending is roughly in balance.
The calculator multiplies your monthly take-home pay by 0.5, 0.3 and 0.2. If you also enter what you spend now in each category, it subtracts each target from your real figure. A plus sign means you spend more than the target in that category.
A worked example
Say you take home £2,600 a month. The rule gives £1,300 for needs, £780 for wants and £520 for savings and extra debt repayments.
Now say your rent, council tax, energy, food, travel to work and minimum repayments come to £1,560, you spend £650 on wants and save £390. The comparison shows needs £260 over target, wants £130 under and savings £130 under. Every pound is accounted for, so nothing is unallocated. You are already spending less than the rule allows on wants, so the shortfall in savings comes from needs.
What counts as needs, wants and savings
Needs are the costs you have no option but to pay. MoneyHelper's examples of essential costs include rent or mortgage, energy bills and food, and it counts keeping up repayments on credit cards and loans as essential too. Add council tax, water, travel to work, phone and broadband, and insurance you cannot do without.
Wants are the non-essentials you could cut back on: eating out, takeaways, subscriptions, holidays and hobbies.
Savings and extra debt repayments cover emergency savings, a house deposit, an ISA, pension saving on top of what already comes out of your pay, and anything you pay off a debt above the minimum.
When the rule does not fit
If you rent in London or another expensive area, rent alone can take up most of the 50%. On a lower income, essentials naturally take a bigger share. In either case the rule cannot fit as written, and that is not a sign you are doing something wrong.
Treat the split as a direction rather than a test. A 60/25/15 or 70/20/10 budget that you can keep to is better than a perfect plan you give up on after a month. If you have expensive credit card or overdraft debt, you might put more than 20% towards clearing it for a while.
Building a budget that works
Start with real numbers. MoneyHelper suggests looking at last month's bank and card statements or keeping a spending diary to see where your money goes, and splitting your spending into essentials and non-essentials. Its free Budget planner adds up your income and outgoings, shows what is left over, and lets you enter yearly costs so it can work out a monthly average.
Once you know what you can save, the first job is usually a cash buffer. The emergency fund calculator shows how long your monthly savings will take to build one, and the savings goal calculator helps with bigger targets after that.
Frequently asked questions
Is 50/30/20 based on my salary or my take-home pay?
Take-home pay, the amount that reaches your account after tax, National Insurance and other deductions. If you already pay into a workplace pension through payroll, that saving is on top of the 20%.
Are loan and credit card repayments needs or savings?
Minimum repayments are needs, because you have to make them. Anything extra you pay to clear the debt sooner counts in the 20% with your savings.
My rent is more than half my pay. What should I do?
Then the 50/30/20 split cannot fit as written. Keep other essentials as low as you reasonably can, trim wants, and save whatever you can keep up, even if it is well under 20%.
Where does council tax go?
Council tax is a need, because you have to pay it. If you pay it over ten months, divide the yearly bill by 12 so your monthly figure is not overstated for most of the year and missing for the rest.
What if my pay changes from month to month?
Base the split on a typical low month so your essentials are always covered. In better months, put the extra into savings or towards debt rather than raising your spending.
Sources
Figures come from institutions millions of people rely on. How we keep calculators accurate.