Where does my money go each month?
Most budget tools subtract your spending from your income and print the difference. The useful answer is not what is left, it is which group is quietly taking more than it should.
Take-home pay. If it varies, use a normal month rather than your best one.
Rent or bond, rates, levies, water and electricity.
Car finance, personal loans, credit cards, store accounts.
Fuel, taxi or bus fare, parking, maintenance.
Car and home insurance, medical aid, gap and funeral cover.
Food, airtime and data, school fees, childcare, household bits.
Put in what comes in, then fill in the groups. You will get what is left over, and which group is taking more than it should.
Nothing is sent anywhere. This runs in your browser.
A guide, not advice, and not a credit assessment. The percentages we flag are widely used rules of thumb rather than any official standard, because nobody publishes one for South African households. Your own circumstances beat any rule of thumb. Our other tools.
What the percentages mean
We flag a group when it passes a share of your income that is widely treated as a warning line. These are rules of thumb, not regulation, and nobody official publishes a household budget standard for South Africa. Your own circumstances beat any of them.
The one worth taking most seriously is debt. Housing is hard to change quickly and living costs are hard to cut far. Debt repayments are the group where paying down the balance frees the most money per rand, and where being over the line has a habit of getting worse on its own.