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📒 Budget Planner

Ten plain categories - mortgage or rent, transport, food, the rest - and one minute is enough to see your monthly and yearly surplus. The real point isn't the budget itself: it's what that surplus becomes if it's invested instead of left sitting there, shown against simply saving the same amount with no growth at all.

Open the calculator — freeno sign-up needed to try it →
Ten categories, nothing forced

Skip whatever doesn't apply - an empty category is left out of your spending, never silently counted as zero.

Invested vs just saved, side by side

The same yearly surplus compared with zero growth against the S&P 500 and ASX 200's own long-run historical averages.

What each category costs you long-term

Every filled category shows its own "invested over N years" figure, using the same formula as the headline numbers.

EXAMPLE — $9,000/mo in, $6,800/mo out → $2,200/mo ($26,400/yr) spare, over 10 years:
Just saved (no growth)$264,000
Invested at the S&P 500's 10%/yr historical average$420,748
Illustrative example from stated inputs - the tool recomputes everything from yours.
How is the invested figure calculated?

Your whole year's savings is treated as one deposit made at each year-end, compounded at the rate you choose for the remaining years - a standard annuity future-value calculation, shown so you can check it by hand.

What return rate does it use?

Whichever you pick - the S&P 500 and ASX 200's own long-run nominal historical averages are offered as a starting point, clearly labelled as history, never a forecast.

Described calculations from your inputs - not tax or financial advice.