Your household budget
Enter each amount and how often it occurs.
Your household budget
Example inputsCheck the highlighted fields to calculate your budget.
- $1,200
- Money left after spending and savings. A negative amount is a shortfall.
- $5,200
- $3,900
- $100
- $277
Amounts are monthly averages. Savings are deducted once, separately from expenses.
| Category | Monthly amount |
|---|---|
| Take-home income | $5,200 |
| Other take-home income | $0 |
| Rent or mortgage | $1,950 |
| Groceries | $650 |
| Utilities, phone and internet | $100 |
| Transport and vehicle costs | $325 |
| Insurance | $100 |
| Medical and dental | $75 |
| School and care | $200 |
| Clothing and personal costs | $100 |
| Entertainment and holidays | $150 |
| Other and irregular costs | $100 |
| Other debt repayments | $150 |
| Savings commitments | $100 |
| Total spending and savings | $4,000 |
| Annual surplus or shortfall | $14,400 |
Putting Costs on the Same Time Basis
This budget planner converts each income and expense into a monthly average before subtracting your outgoings. Enter take-home income, choose each payment's frequency and include savings you want to set aside.
The calculation uses 52 weeks, 26 fortnights, 12 months or four quarters per year. An annual amount is divided by 12. A calendar month is longer than four weeks, so multiplying weekly costs by four understates the monthly average.
| Entry | Monthly average |
|---|---|
| $1,200 weekly income | $5,200 |
| $2,400 fortnightly income | $5,200 |
| $300 quarterly bill | $100 |
| $1,200 annual insurance | $100 |
These averages help compare a weekly budget with a monthly budget. Actual payments still fall on their own due dates, so keep enough in your account for large bills between paydays.
Household Expenses That Are Easy to Miss
Include costs that occur less often than your pay, as well as everyday spending. Annual insurance and quarterly utilities need a place in the budget even in months when nothing is paid.
Use Moneysmart's budget categories to check your coverage. Include registration, servicing and repairs under transport. Allow for school fees, childcare and dependant costs under school and care.
Clothing, medical bills, gifts, subscriptions, holidays and pet costs can disappear in a rough weekly estimate. Add any costs without their own category to other and irregular costs. Combine costs on the same time basis before entering a category total.
Enter rent or mortgage payments under housing. Keep other debt repayments separate and avoid counting a card purchase again when paying the card bill. Savings commitments reduce the money left to allocate, but the results show them separately from spending.
Reading and Exporting the Budget
A positive surplus is money left after expenses and savings commitments. A negative result is a shortfall: the planned outgoings exceed take-home income. The monthly table shows which categories contribute to the total.
The starting example has $5,200 monthly income, $3,900 expenses and $100 set aside for savings. That leaves $1,200 per month, or $14,400 per year. Changing a frequency recalculates its monthly amount without changing the amount you entered.
Use this free online budget planner as an editable household budget template. Download CSV to open the budget spreadsheet in Excel or another spreadsheet app. The export includes each entered amount and frequency, monthly averages and annual totals, with cents retained for reconciliation.
The on-page totals use whole dollars and calculate from unrounded amounts. Rounded category rows can differ slightly from a rounded total. The downloaded file contains values, so editing it later requires your own spreadsheet formulas.
Your completed budget stays in this page's memory until you leave or reload. The planner does not save or transmit your financial entries. Download your copy before closing the page, and keep it somewhere suitable for household financial information.
Budget Figures and a Loan Assessment
A household budget records declared spending. A lender also assesses income, commitments and living expenses under its lending rules, so the budget surplus alone does not establish borrowing capacity.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) explains the responsible lending assessment, including enquiries about the consumer's financial situation and reasonable verification. A lender's expenditure benchmark is a comparison used in assessment, not a replacement for recording what the household actually spends.
Keep evidence of ongoing costs and note which expenses change after a purchase or refinance. A rent payment that stops and an investment-loan payment that continues have different effects on the proposed household budget.
Once the spending picture is complete, the borrowing-power calculator can estimate a loan amount using income, debts and assessment assumptions. The lender's own assessment sets the final figure.
Converting Rent Into Weekly or Monthly Costs
Convert weekly rent to a monthly average by multiplying by 52 and dividing by 12. To convert monthly rent to a weekly average, multiply by 12 and divide by 52.
For example, $450 weekly rent becomes $1,950 a month. Enter it in the housing field to include rent in the household surplus. Using four weeks would give $1,800 and understate the monthly cost by $150.
The same average-budget conversion works for a rental property in Victoria or another state. It does not calculate rent payable for a specific tenancy period. A rental affordability estimate also does not decide whether a landlord accepts an application.