Budget Calculator - Calculatorall.com
The budget calculator here can be used effectively for personal finance planning. The income items that are taken as input are all before tax.
How You Should Budget?
Generally, budgeting is characterized by a couple of things: not exceeding your means and making plans for future. To accomplish both these goals, setting up personal budget in detail and then sticking to it can lay the foundation of successful budgeting.
First of all, you need to prepare a list of every payment you have to make each month, and everything you'd like to have. Ensure that there is enough amount set aside for the essentials. Besides, put something aside for the emergencies as well.
Once you will have a clear idea of what your needs are, you'd realize that you spend considerable amount on non-essentials. You might be having some extra dinners out each week that are not needed. You may go shopping just for fun and buy things that you can easily live without. You should better trim down and still let yourself have a few extras within your budget.
Incomes
All of us have a natural desire for higher income. Higher income always offers greater flexibility when it comes to expenses. In order to achieve this, you need to be proactive in finding new job opportunities or increasing your earning potential by getting more education and developing new skills. You can also think of increasing your investment income as well.
The budget calculator takes into account all your incomes coming from different sources in order to give you some budgeting insights.
Expenses
This budget calculator also considers all your expenses while giving you the budgeting insights. Let's look at some of the expenses that are considered.
Housing And Utilities
Housing and utilities cost may involve any mortgage, monthly rent, property tax or any other such costs.
Debts
There can be different kinds of debts that you might have to spend on every month. These can include personal loan, credit card, and student loan, etc.
Living Expenses
Expenses that are related to our daily life might appear to be small as compared to other categories but it is common for them add up quickly without drawing much attention. However, our budget calculator takes them into consideration quite effectively.
Healthcare
The healthcare costs per person in the United States stand around $10000. This expense has very little pliability when it comes to what you can do about these costs in your personal budgets. Take it in the long run and things like regular exercise and eating healthier can pay you off quite well.
Education
We hear it quite often that investing in education would probably be your best investment. So, this expense is a must and should be taken into account while budgeting.
Savings & Investments
Any healthy budget would have something allocated for future. This can include your investments or savings for retirement, education, growth, emergency, etc. And, if you manage things well, you can think of retiring in an earlier age.
Miscellaneous Expenses
This section involves quite a few expenses which can easily fall within blurred lines discussed previously between wants and needs. There's a lot depending on your personal discretion. So, if you over-expend then it will wreck your otherwise good budget. However, if you keep things moderate then it will ease stress and will be a great thing for your budget.
The budget calculator that we have here takes into account all the above mentioned expenses to give you some great insights into your income and expenses. There are different sub categories of income and expenses under each head and you can take an organized approach to budgeting with this budget calculator. Just take living expenses, for instance. The category is sub-categorized into grocery items, transportation, utilities, clothing, entertainment, child and personal care, home maintenance, vacation and travel, and other such expenses like what you spend on hobbies, eating out, etc. Similarly, there are sub categories for all other expenses and also for incomes so that you can cover all possible monthly inflow and outflow of money to come up with an effective budget.
As you hit the calculate button after providing all the required information, the budget calculator shows you different variables including your total income before tax, total income after tax, total expenses, net discretionary income, housing and debts, savings and investment, living expenses, and everything else. Besides, the calculator tells you what percentage of your income the debts are and what percentage of your income different other expenses are.
So, use this budget calculator for effective budgeting and knowing the actual condition of your income and expenses. It will let you to take some remedial actions as well to put things in order.