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Budget calculator

You can use this calculator to see where your money goes or to plan a budget.

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You can use this calculator to:

  • see where your money goes or to write a budget
  • experiment with changes to your income or outgoings to see how this might affect your overall finances, for example if you are thinking about buying your first home, moving home, changing your job or retiring.

What you will need

You will need information to hand about your:

  • household income for example your salary, pension, rental/investment income or any benefits you receive
  • outgoings for example mortgage/rent, council tax, utilities, phone, loans, credit cards
  • spending habits for example food, travelling, holidays, pets, going out, clothes.

You might find these on your bank statement or credit card statement. Some provide a breakdown of your spending each month or annually. Find out as much information from your bills or statements as you can before you start so your budget is as accurate as possible

If you can't be accurate, don’t worry. You can add what you spend as weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or annual payments and the calculator will work out everything for you. You can always change these on the results screen to try different combinations.

Estimated time to complete: 20-40 minutes

Budget planner calculator

The tool above is provided by MoneyHelper. Please refer to their website for the MoneyHelper privacy notice.

Key points

  • Once you have added your information the calculator will work out how much you have left over or how much you are overspent each month
  • If you want to see how cutting back or increasing your spending will affect your finances you can use the edit buttons on the summary screen to change your information
  • Once you have finished you can download the budget as a spreadsheet to keep at home and monitor or you can have the summary emailed to you

Next steps

  • Now you know how much you have left over or have overspent each month you can:
    • download the information as a spreadsheet to keep and monitor to see how closely your outgoings match your budget
  • If you have money left over every month you may want to think about setting up some regular savings or increasing contributions to your pension
  • Use the MoneyHelper savings calculator
  • Register or log in to Manage Your Account to review your pension savings
  • If you are spending more than you receive every month you may want to review your outgoings to see where you can cut back. Use the edit buttons to change your information to see the impact on your overall finances
  • If you are in debit each month and you are building up debt, you can get help from free debt advisers. Debt can be difficult to deal with, but you’re not alone.
  • Use the MoneyHelper debt advice locator tool to find free debt advice in your local area
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