Enter your monthly take-home pay and what you spend on housing, bills, food, transport, debt, subscriptions and everything else. The planner shows what is left, your savings rate, and how your essentials compare with the 50/30/20 guideline. It works in your browser and stores nothing.
Track it in the app →Calculated on your device. Shared links include the amounts you enter.
How to fill it in
Income: take-home pay after tax, National Insurance, pension and student loan, plus benefits. Weekly amounts times 52 divided by 12.
Housing and bills: the direct debits and standing orders on last month’s statement.
Groceries, transport, subscriptions and everything else: the card spending from the same statement, averaged over two or three months if it varies.
Debt: the payments you actually make, not the minimums you could make.
Example: £2,400 take-home
Housing £900, bills £350, groceries £320, transport £150 and debt £100 make essentials of £1,820, or 76% of income. Subscriptions £40 and everything else £300 bring spending to £2,160, leaving £240, a 10% savings rate. Housing at 37.5% is the number to watch: it is the reason essentials are over the 50% guideline, and it is the hardest line to change quickly.
What the guideline numbers mean
Measure
Guideline
Why
Essentials share
50% of take-home or less
Leaves room for choices and savings
Housing share
Around 30 to 35% or less
Above that, one rent rise or rate change strains everything
Savings rate
20% is the 50/30/20 target
Start with any positive number; build to it
From a one-off plan to a monthly habit
This planner gives you a picture from numbers you typed. The Income Tracker gives you the same picture from your real bank transactions, every month, with the categories remembered. Import a CSV and the surplus, savings rate and category totals update on their own.
The Income TrackerBuild the same picture from your real transactions, every month.
One where essentials are around half of take-home pay or less, and something is saved every month. The exact figures depend on where you live; the shares matter more than the pounds.
How much should rent be as a percentage of income?
A common guideline is 30 to 35% of take-home pay. In London and the South East many people pay more, which is why the rest of the budget needs to be tighter.
Does this budget planner store my numbers?
No. Everything is calculated in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. A shared link includes the amounts you entered, so only share it if you are happy with that.
Is there a downloadable version?
Yes. The free monthly budget planner template on this site is a CSV with the same groups, and it imports straight into The Income Tracker.