Budget Calculator

The 50-30-20 rule (50% needs, 30% wants, 20% savings) works well for a single renter earning a middle income in a small city, which is exactly what this calculator uses as its base case. But a family with kids paying a home loan in a metro city has genuinely higher fixed costs, and a high earner can usually push savings well above 20%. This calculator scales the split by your income bracket, housing status, family type, and city tier instead of applying the same ratio to everyone.

Needs are costs you cannot skip without real disruption: rent or home loan EMI, groceries, utilities, insurance premiums, minimum debt payments, and commute. Wants are everything discretionary: eating out, streaming subscriptions, travel, shopping, and hobbies. Savings covers your emergency fund, SIPs, retirement contributions, and any other money you set aside rather than spend.

A high needs percentage usually comes from a combination of owning a home (EMI), a metro city, and a larger family, all of which push up fixed costs. Start by trimming the wants category since it is the most flexible, and check whether any recurring "need" (like a large EMI) can be renegotiated or refinanced. Once your Emergency Fund is in place, redirect any extra room in your budget toward the savings share shown here.

A home loan EMI is typically a bigger, less flexible fixed cost than rent at the same income level, so this calculator adds a larger needs adjustment for "own, paying an EMI" than for renting. If you own your home outright with no loan, the calculator does the opposite: it lowers your needs share, since you have no rent or EMI at all, and hands that freed-up percentage straight to your recommended savings rate.

The first kid adds the biggest jump to your needs share (school fees, food, and childcare are real, ongoing costs), and each additional kid adds a smaller amount on top, since some costs like housing don't scale linearly per child. Select "Married with kids" and then choose how many kids you have to see the adjustment.

Use your monthly take-home pay (after tax, PF, and other deductions), since that is the amount you actually have to allocate. If you want to work from your CTC instead, run it through the Net vs Gross Salary Calculator first to get your monthly take-home figure.

Recalculate whenever your income changes meaningfully, you move to a different city tier, your housing status changes (for example you buy a home after renting), or your family situation changes (marriage, a child). Otherwise, revisiting it once a year alongside your annual increment is a reasonable check-in.

No. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is sent to a server or account. If you use the "Save this as your baseline" option, it is stored only in your browser's local storage so the Emergency Fund and Goal Planning calculators can pre-fill from it, and you can clear it at any time from the Your Plan widget.