Budget calculator with the 50 30 20 rule
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Months until the reserve is built at this pace
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| Slice | Yours | Reference value | Difference |
|---|
| How much the reserve has to be | — |
| Still missing to reach the fifth of your income | — |
Fifty, thirty and twenty is a reference from a book, not a law, and plenty of budgets that miss it are fine. What is not a matter of opinion is the deadline: heavy essentials raise the reserve you need and shrink what is left to build it, both at once, so the months multiply much faster than the percentage moves.
Is fifty, thirty and twenty a rule I have to follow?
No. It comes from a book, it is a reference, and plenty of budgets that miss it are perfectly fine. This page does not grade anybody: it shows how far each slice is from the reference in money, and leaves the judgement to the person who earns it.
What is not a matter of opinion is the deadline. A percentage is hard to feel; the number of months to build a reserve is not.
Why is the reserve counted in months of essentials and not of income?
Because the reserve exists to cover what keeps being charged when the income stops, and that is the essentials, not the whole salary. Counting whole months of income sets a target bigger than the emergency actually requires.
Six months is the usual starting point, but the field is there because the right number depends on how easily your income could come back.
Why do a few points of extra rent change the deadline so much?
Because heavy essentials do two things at once: they raise the reserve you need and they shrink what is left to build it. With five thousand coming in and fifteen hundred of non essential spending, essentials of 2,500 leave a thousand a month against a target of 15,000, which is fifteen months. Essentials of 3,200 leave three hundred against a target of 19,200, which is sixty four.
The essentials went up by twenty eight percent and the wait more than quadrupled. That is the whole reason this tool answers in months.
What if cutting the non essential is not enough?
Then the tool says so plainly, with the amount that would still have to come out of the essentials. That is a different kind of decision: it usually means moving house or changing something structural, not tightening a belt.
Saying it out loud is more useful than a chart that keeps suggesting the impossible.
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