Split take-home pay into needs, wants and savings, then see how your actual spending compares.
Based on your income and rule.
The 50/30/20 split — 50% needs, 30% wants, 20% savings — is a popular budgeting heuristic popularized by Senator Elizabeth Warren's writing on personal finance, not a law of economics. It's a starting point, and this tool lets you swap it for a needs-heavy or savings-focused split, or define your own.
A need is something you'd keep paying for even in a lean month: rent, groceries, utilities, minimum debt payments. A want is everything that's genuinely optional, however routine it feels — restaurant meals, subscriptions, upgrades. Categorizing spending honestly matters more than which percentages you pick.
When actual spending is entered, the tool flags whether your needs and wants are running over the suggested budget and estimates the monthly savings that leaves — a quick gut-check before drafting a full budget elsewhere.
Minimum required debt payments are usually counted as needs, since missing them has real consequences. Extra, optional debt payoff beyond the minimum can be counted as savings instead.
That's common in high cost-of-living areas — switch to the 60/20/20 preset or a custom split so the budget reflects reality instead of fighting it.
No — it's a quick sanity-check for how your spending is proportioned, not a transaction tracker. Use it to set targets, then track actual spending with your bank or a dedicated budgeting tool.