Should I use monthly or fortnightly?

Use whichever matches when you get paid. If you're paid fortnightly, select Fortnightly and enter your take-home per fortnight; we convert to monthly for comparison.

What if I'm over budget?

Look at the breakdown and trim non-essential categories, or find ways to increase income. Even small cuts add up.

What percentage of income should go to savings?

20% is a common rule of thumb (as in the 50/30/20 budget: 50% needs, 30% wants, 20% savings), but the right number depends on your goals, debt and cost of living — treat it as a starting point to adjust, not a fixed target.

Should rent or mortgage repayments be a fixed percentage of income?

A common guideline is no more than 30% of gross income on housing, though this varies a lot by city and household. If housing is well above that, it constrains every other category and is usually the first thing worth reviewing.

How do I budget with irregular income?

Budget against your lowest reliable month rather than an average, and treat anything earned above that as a bonus to allocate to savings or debt once it actually arrives, rather than spending against income you haven't received yet.

Do I need to track every single transaction to budget properly?

No — most people get useful results from six to eight broad categories reviewed monthly. Tracking every transaction individually is more accurate but adds effort that causes many people to abandon budgeting altogether within a few weeks.

Monthly Budget Calculator

Split your income into spending categories and see if you have a surplus or shortfall.

Enter your income (monthly or fortnightly) and add categories like rent, bills, groceries and savings. We’ll show total allocated, surplus or shortfall and a breakdown by category.

Monthly Budget

Income vs spending categories. All amounts per month (or we convert from fortnightly).

Pay period

Income per month ($)

How to Use This Calculator

1Choose pay period (monthly or fortnightly) and enter your income
2Edit the preset categories or add your own (rent, bills, groceries, savings, etc.)
3Enter the amount you allocate to each category per month
4See your total allocated, surplus or shortfall and breakdown by category

What Is a Monthly Budget?

A monthly budget is a plan that divides your income into spending and saving categories. It helps you see where your money goes and whether you are living within your means.

Comparing income to category totals shows if you have a surplus (money left over) or a shortfall (spending more than you earn).

The categories matter less than the discipline of having any at all — six broad buckets (rent, bills, groceries, transport, savings, other) are usually enough to catch a shortfall early, without the overhead of tracking every individual transaction line by line.

Why Budget by Category?

Visibility: You see exactly how much goes to rent, bills, food, transport and savings.
Surplus vs shortfall: Knowing if you are over or under helps you adjust spending or income.
Savings as a category: Treating savings as a fixed category helps you pay yourself first.
Pay period matching: Budgeting in the same period you're paid (monthly or fortnightly) avoids the rounding errors that creep in when you convert between the two informally.

Budgeting Tips

•Use bank statements or an expense tracker to estimate category amounts
•Include a Savings category and set a target (e.g. 20% of income)
•Review your budget when income or expenses change

Frequently Asked Questions

Official Sources

Estimates only. Not financial or tax advice. Full disclaimer for your rights and our limitations of liability.

About this calculator

This calculator exists to show you the arithmetic. It applies published Australian rates, thresholds and formulas to the numbers you enter and shows the working, so you can check it. That is all it does — it produces a number and describes what the number is. It does not recommend anything and it holds no opinion about any financial product.

What can move this result

It only knows the figures you type in. Offsets, deductions, prior-year losses, other income, your partner's position and anything you have not entered are not in the result, and any of them can move it a long way.
Rates and thresholds change, sometimes mid-year and occasionally with retrospective effect. Each calculator shows the financial year and the verification date it is working from — outside that year the result is wrong rather than approximate.
Assumptions are set to a reasonable default and every non-statutory one can be changed. Defaults are not predictions, and a small change to a growth or inflation assumption compounds into a large change in a long projection.
Where a result reaches two or more years into the future it is shown in today's dollars as well as future dollars, because a future-dollar figure overstates what the money will actually buy.
It is a generic calculator. It is not built around any particular product, it does not compare the market, and it cannot tell you whether a product is suitable for you.

This calculator is not intended to be relied on for the purposes of making a decision in relation to a financial product. Before you make a financial decision, consider obtaining advice from someone who holds an Australian Financial Services Licence. We do not, and we cannot advise you.

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About this calculator

What can move this result

It only knows the figures you type in. Offsets, deductions, prior-year losses, other income, your partner's position and anything you have not entered are not in the result, and any of them can move it a long way.
Rates and thresholds change, sometimes mid-year and occasionally with retrospective effect. Each calculator shows the financial year and the verification date it is working from — outside that year the result is wrong rather than approximate.
Assumptions are set to a reasonable default and every non-statutory one can be changed. Defaults are not predictions, and a small change to a growth or inflation assumption compounds into a large change in a long projection.
Where a result reaches two or more years into the future it is shown in today's dollars as well as future dollars, because a future-dollar figure overstates what the money will actually buy.
It is a generic calculator. It is not built around any particular product, it does not compare the market, and it cannot tell you whether a product is suitable for you.