Budget calculator
Enter your monthly take-home income and what you spend by category. The calculator shows what is left at the end of the month, your savings rate and which categories take the largest share. Nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere: the numbers stay in your browser.
Short version
- Use take-home pay, not gross salary: tax is not money you can allocate.
- Anything left over is only real once irregular yearly costs are divided by twelve and included.
- A savings rate below ten percent means one category needs to change, usually the largest one.
- The plan is worth nothing without the record: what makes a budget work is knowing what actually happened.
Monthly expenses
Left at the end of the month
$840
How to use the result
The number at the bottom is not a score, it is a decision waiting to be made. If it is positive and unassigned, it will be spent: money without a job disappears into ordinary weeks. Give it one before the month starts, in this order: an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, then any debt above roughly eight percent interest, then goals with names and dates.
If the number is negative, resist the urge to trim ten categories by a few dollars each. That never holds. Look at the two largest lines instead, which for most households are housing and transport, because a single change there outweighs a year of small cuts elsewhere.
The mistake that breaks most budgets
Almost every budget that stops working was built from a normal month. Normal months do not include annual insurance, the car service, a birthday run in October, or the trip everyone takes in summer. These costs are perfectly predictable in a year and completely invisible in a month, so the plan looks balanced and then breaks four times a year. The fix is arithmetic: add up those yearly costs, divide by twelve, and enter that number in the calculator as its own line. The monthly margin gets smaller and starts being true.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate a monthly budget?
Start with the income you actually receive after tax, then list what leaves the account each month by category, then subtract. The number left over is your real monthly margin. If it is negative, the budget is not balanced yet and one category has to move.
What percentage of income should go to each category?
A common starting split is half of take-home pay for needs, thirty percent for wants and twenty percent for saving and debt payoff. Treat it as a reference point rather than a rule: in expensive housing markets rent alone can take half, which changes every other share.
What should I do with the money left over?
Give it a job before the month starts. In order: build an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, clear high-interest debt, then save toward specific goals. Money without an assigned purpose is spent by default.
Why does my budget never match reality?
Almost always because irregular costs are missing. Annual insurance, car repairs, gifts and travel do not appear in a typical month but arrive every year. Divide each by twelve and put that amount in the monthly plan, or every few months will break the budget.
How often should I update the budget?
Check the categories weekly, which takes a couple of minutes, and revise the plan monthly using what actually happened. Budgets built once and never revisited stop matching life within two months.
A plan is one half, the record is the other
The calculator plans the month. What decides the outcome is what you actually spend, and from memory that is understated by about half. BudgetOK records expenses in a couple of seconds from your phone and shows the category limit as you go, so the plan and reality stay in the same place.