Income & Budget

See what's left each month — then put it to work across your plan

👋 This is a sample budget showing how it works — change any number and it becomes yours. Once it's yours, the Debt Payoff, Mortgage, and Car tools can use your surplus too.

Monthly Take-Home Income

After-tax income ($/mo)

Monthly Expenses

List living costs only. Leave out debt payments — those are handled in Debt Payoff and come out of your surplus.

Expense name

Amount ($/mo)

Type

Monthly Surplus
$1,960
37.7% of take-home · after $3,240 of living costs

Fixed Costs

$2,190

Variable Costs

$1,050

Where Your Income Goes

Fixed

$2,190

Variable

$1,050

Surplus

$1,960

This sample budget has $1,960/mo to deploy. Make it yours — change any number — and a Use budget surplus button appears on the Debt Payoff and Car tabs to put your real surplus to work.

How the budget planner works

Enter your monthly take-home pay and your living costs. What’s left is your monthly surplus — the number every other decision hangs on. One deliberate choice: debt payments don’t go in the expense list. They come out of your surplus, over in the Debt Payoff planner — listing them in both places would double-count them and understate what you can actually do.

Fixed vs. variable costs

Fixed costs (rent, insurance, subscriptions) don’t move without a life change. Variable costs (groceries, dining, fun) flex month to month — which makes them the first place to look when the surplus needs to grow. The breakdown shows exactly where each dollar of income lands.

FAQ

What counts as an expense here?

Living costs only — housing, utilities, food, transport, subscriptions. Skip debt payments (Debt Payoff handles those) and savings (that's what the surplus is for).

What's a good savings rate?

There's no magic number, but 20% of take-home is a common target. If your surplus is negative, fix that before anything else.

How does this connect to the other tools?

Your surplus flows through the whole app: it becomes your extra debt payment, your car payment budget, and the yardstick for whether a mortgage fits.