50/30/20 budget calculator
The 50/30/20 rule splits your take-home pay into 50% needs, 30% wants and 20% savings. Enter your income to get your three numbers. Add what you actually spend to see how close you are.
What counts as a need vs a want?
Needs are what you'd have to pay even in a lean month: rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, insurance, transport to work, minimum loan payments. Wants are everything you could cut: restaurants, subscriptions, shopping, travel. Savings covers your emergency fund, retirement contributions and extra debt payments beyond the minimum.
In high-cost cities, needs often run 60% or more. That's normal. Treat 50/30/20 as a starting point, not a pass/fail test, and watch the trend month to month.
The hard part: knowing what you actually spend
Most people guess their spending low. The GetNeatNumbers Personal Budget for Google Sheets imports your bank CSV, sorts every transaction into categories and shows budget vs actual for each one, so you're working from real numbers instead of estimates.