Free Australian Budget Planner

A free budget planner for Australian households. Put in what you earn and what you spend, weekly, fortnightly, monthly or yearly, and it works out what is left over. Nothing is saved and there is no sign-up.

Weekly, fortnightly or monthly — the planner handles all three

Most budget calculators make you convert everything yourself, which is where the errors creep in. Here, every line has its own setting. Rent monthly, pay fortnightly, groceries weekly, registration yearly. The planner turns the lot into a monthly figure so the numbers actually line up.

That matters most for fortnightly pay. Fortnightly is not monthly divided by two — there are 26 fortnights in a year, not 24, so two months a year you get a third pay. Treating that as normal income is how a budget quietly runs a couple of hundred dollars short every month.

Download the budget planner template

If you would rather work in a spreadsheet, the Excel version does the same job offline.

Budget planner template (Excel) — the same categories, the same weekly, fortnightly, monthly and yearly switch, and the totals work themselves out. A second sheet explains how to fill it in.

How to fill it in without guessing

Open your banking app and go back three months, not one. One month flatters you or punishes you depending on whether the car registration happened to fall in it. Three months shows the pattern.

Annual bills are the ones people forget: registration, insurance, the school levy, the accountant. Put them in at the yearly setting rather than dividing them in your head.

What counts as an essential

The planner splits your spending into essentials, extras, and money you put away. Essentials are the things that cause real trouble if they stop: the roof, the power, getting to work, food, and the debts you are contracted to repay. Extras are everything you would still be alive without — the subscriptions, the Friday night, the gym you have not been to since March.

The line is not a moral judgement. It is there because when money gets tight, the extras column is the only one you can move quickly.

The numbers most people get wrong

Groceries. Almost everyone underestimates this one, usually by a third, because the top-up shops on the way home do not feel like grocery shopping. Add them up from the statement rather than from memory.

Eating out. Same problem, worse. Coffee twice a workday at $5.50 is about $230 a month.

Subscriptions. Streaming, cloud storage, apps, the software you signed up for once. Ten dollars here and fifteen there is invisible on a statement and obvious in a total.

Buy now pay later. It is a debt repayment, not shopping. It belongs in the debts section, which is where a lender will put it too.

What a lender does with your budget

If you are heading toward a home loan, the bank does not simply take your word on living costs. Lenders compare what you declare against a benchmark for a household of your size and income, and they use whichever is higher. Declaring $900 a month of living costs for a family of four will not help you — it will get replaced.

They also test the loan at a rate about three percentage points above the one you are being offered, because the regulator requires that buffer. So the surplus this planner shows you is not the surplus a lender will use. Theirs will be smaller.

What the planner is good for is the truth of it. If your real surplus is thin, you will find out here rather than in an assessor's email six weeks into a purchase.

If you are short every month

Attack it in this order, because it is the order that gives back the most for the least pain.

1. The debts with the highest rate, usually the credit card and buy now pay later. Every dollar of card interest is a dollar that does nothing.
2. The recurring costs you can renegotiate in one phone call — insurance, power, mobile, internet. These reset each year and almost nobody checks.
3. The home loan itself, if you have one. It is the biggest number in most people's budget, so a rate that is half a per cent off the pace costs more than every subscription combined.
4. The extras, last. They are the smallest column and the one everyone starts with.

Questions people ask

Is this budget planner free?

Yes, and there is no account to create. The planner runs in your browser, the spreadsheet is a straight download, and neither asks for an email address.

Should I include super in my income?

No. Use what actually lands in your account after tax. Employer super is not money you can spend this month, so putting it in makes the surplus look bigger than it is. Extra contributions you make yourself do belong in the money-you-put-away section.

What about irregular income?

If you are self-employed or your hours move around, use your lowest recent month rather than the average. A budget built on a good month is a budget that fails in a quiet one. A lender will take a similar view, usually working off a two-year picture.

Is anything I type here saved?

No. The planner runs inside your own browser. Nothing is sent to us and nothing is stored, so close the tab and it is gone.

How often should I redo this?

Every six months, and again before you apply for anything. Costs drift, and the categories that grow are rarely the ones you would guess.