NordForma Studio

Free tool · runs in your browser

50/30/20 Budget Calculator

Half of take-home pay for needs, thirty percent for wants, twenty for savings and debt payoff. Enter what you actually spend and see the gap in each bucket.

What you spend now

Targets vs actual

Needs target 50%-
  actual · gap- · -
Wants target 30%-
  actual · gap- · -
Savings target 20%-
  actual · gap- · -
Unassigned money-
Your savings rate-
A positive gap on needs or wants means you are over target; a negative gap on savings means under. Unassigned money is what slips away without a decision.

Using the rule without lying to yourself

The rule is a starting shape, not a law. In high-rent cities needs run 60% or more and the fix is not guilt but a plan to lower fixed costs over a year. The one bucket worth defending is savings: pay it first on payday, and let wants absorb the squeeze.

What a calculator cannot do is remember last month. For that you need a place where every month sits next to the previous one. The Annual Budget Spreadsheet does this in Google Sheets or Excel, and the Personal Finance Dashboard does it in a browser app that keeps your data on your own device and never asks for a bank login.