Budget planner (50/30/20). Give every dollar a job.

How to use the Budget Planner (50/30/20)

This planner splits your monthly take-home pay into three buckets, Needs, Wants and Savings & debt, by a percentage rule you choose. You then list your real expenses under each bucket and a bar shows how much room is left. It is for anyone setting up a simple monthly budget without a spreadsheet.

Step by step

1. 1
   Enter your income

   Type your pay after tax into Monthly take-home income. Use the monthly figure, not yearly or gross. If you just want to see how the planner works first, press Load example to fill in a sample budget on a 3000 income with the 50/30/20 rule. It replaces your income, rule and any line items you already have, without asking.

2. 2
   Pick a currency

   Choose a symbol from the Currency list, such as $ USD, € EUR, £ GBP or ₹ INR. There are ten options. The symbol only changes how amounts are shown; no exchange rate is applied.

3. 3
   Choose a rule

   Under Rule, press 50/30/20, 60/20/20 or 70/20/10. The three numbers are the percent for Needs, Wants and Savings & debt in that order. 50/30/20 is selected by default.

4. 4
   Or set your own split

   Press Custom to open three rows: Needs %, Wants %, Savings %. Drag each slider or type a whole number from 0 to 100. The total line underneath tells you how many points to add or remove until it reads 100%.

5. 5
   Add your real expenses

   In each bucket card, press Add line item, type a name such as Rent and an amount. Add as many rows as you need, and use the cross at the end of a row to delete it. The bar and the line below it update as you type.

6. 6
   Export or start over

   Press Copy summary for a plain text plan you can paste anywhere, or Download CSV for a file named budget-plan.csv that opens in any spreadsheet app. Both need an income entered first. Reset clears income, rule and every line item after you confirm, but keeps your currency.

Reading the result

• The four cards at the top show your income and the amount each bucket gets. On the example income of 3000 with 50/30/20, that is 1,500.00 for Needs, 900.00 for Wants and 600.00 for Savings & debt.
• Under each bucket, the line reads Planned (the sum of your line items) of the allocation, followed by Remaining. In the example, Wants shows 225.00 planned of 900.00, with 675.00 remaining.
• When planned spending goes over the allocation, the bar turns red and the line says Over by and the gap. In the example, Needs lists 1,560.00 against 1,500.00, so it is over by 60.00.
• The donut chart under Your split shows the same three shares. If a custom rule adds up to less than 100%, a gray Unallocated slice shows the money with no job yet.

Tips and common mistakes

• Use take-home pay, not salary. A rule applied to gross income leaves nothing for taxes and makes every bucket look bigger than it is.
• Put minimum debt payments under Needs and any extra payments under Savings & debt, so the rule reflects what you must pay versus what you choose to pay down.
• A custom split that does not reach 100% is allowed, but the leftover shows as Unallocated. Give it a job or move it to Savings %.
• If a bucket is red, first trim line items in Wants before cutting Savings & debt.
• Download a CSV now and then as a backup. Clearing your browser's site data deletes the saved budget.

Privacy and limits

Everything is calculated in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. Your income, rule, custom split, currency and line items are saved in this browser's local storage, so they come back when you return and stay in step across open tabs. They do not follow you to another browser or device.

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Budgeting, without the spreadsheet.

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