Budgeting
A spending plan built on what actually reaches your account, an emergency fund sized on what you really spend, and savings goals with the arithmetic shown. Free, no sign-up.
50/30/20 is a share of take-home pay, not of your salary
This is the single commonest way the rule is misapplied. Roughly a fifth of a salary goes to tax before it reaches you, so a 50% needs budget built from gross is one you cannot fund — you would be over budget before buying anything. Every calculator here asks for take-home pay and says so, and links to the take-home pay calculator if you don’t know yours.
Calculators
Monthly debt calculator
Add up your recurring monthly debts — for a mortgage debt-to-income (DTI) check, a rent application, or a payoff plan.
50/30/20 budget calculator
Needs, wants, and savings as shares of your TAKE-HOME pay — not of gross, which is the version that never balances.
Debt payoff calculator
Avalanche against snowball, month by month — and the real dollar cost of choosing the easier one.
Where does my paycheck go
Take-home from Salary, housing from Rent or Mortgage, debts from the debt calculator — and what is actually left.
Savings goal calculator
What a target costs each month, and how much of it growth is expected to supply rather than you.
Emergency fund calculator
Months of essential spending, not months of income — the distinction that decides whether the number is right for you.
Why there are no state pages here
Every other category on this site has a page per state because its math really does change at a state line. Budgeting does not. What varies by state is your income tax, which the Salary calculators work out, and your housing cost, which Rent and Mortgage already handle. Take those out and a budget split, an emergency-fund target, and a debt payoff order are the same arithmetic in all fifty states. Fifty pages differing only in a figure another calculator produced would be differentiation we invented, and this site exists not to do that.
Guidelines and estimates, not financial advice. How we calculate every figure