Monthly budget planner

Getting a budget or a savings planner in place is the first step to seeing what you spend and how much you can save. The less you spend, the more you can save towards the deposit for your first house, that kitchen update or holiday of a lifetime.

How much of my salary should be going towards rent and bills?

How much of your salary or monthly income goes on your rent and bills depends on everyone’s individual circumstances. There are lots of different approaches to organising your budget planner and knowing where your monthly money is allocated, let’s have a look at a couple of them...

The 50/30/20 idea

Working your budget and saving planner into the 50/30/20 idea simply means your income is divided into those percentages. The breakdown is…

• 50% for your ‘needs’, the non-negotiable monthly bills such as rent or mortgage, groceries, insurance, transport, and utilities. 
• 30% of your income can go towards your ‘wants’ or disposable spending such as eating out and shopping etc.
• The remaining 20% of your income goes towards long or short-term saving.

The zero-based budget idea

This budgeting planner idea means that every penny from your monthly budget is allocated towards something. Here’s how:  

• Start with your total income for the month
• Take away the exact amounts of your outgoings to the penny. For example, if you pay £7.99 for a subscription service, log this as the cost, not £8.
• Take away your savings from what’s left. For example, £300 into your Lifetime ISA or £100 into your holiday pot and £50 into an emergency fund.
• Remember to add in adhoc budgets into your money planner for discretional spending such as eating out, gifting, hair or grooming treatments, shopping etc – everything should have a budget or an exact price.
• At the end you should be left with £0.00 as everything from your monthly income has been allocated somewhere. No more wondering ‘where did my money go?!’.

How much do I need to save for a deposit?

Saving for a deposit on a house is a hot topic here at Beehive and using a budget builder such as this one can help you work out how much you have left from your monthly income to save. We also have a mortgage calculator which could double up as a mortgage budget planner for the future as it can help you work out what your monthly repayments could be.

Whichever monthly money planner approach you opt for, re-visiting it often is a great way to keep on top of your budget.