50/30/20 Calculator

The 50/30/20 split was popularised by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi in All Your Worth: half of take-home pay to needs, thirty percent to wants, twenty percent to saving and debt beyond the minimums. It works on take-home pay, not gross.

It is a starting frame, not a rule. In an expensive rental market the needs half is often impossible, and that result is information rather than failure: it says the housing line is the thing to work on, not the coffee.