Budget splits for your take-home pay

50/30/20 is the world's default budget: half your take-home pay for needs, a third for wants, a fifth for savings and extra debt. It's a clean place to start. In South Africa, where the bond and the fuel bill run high, the needs half is usually the first thing to break.

Enter your monthly take-home pay and this divides it across four splits: 50/30/20, 70/20/10, 80/20 and 60/30/10. Each bucket comes back as a rand amount rather than a percentage, with a donut and a weekly breakdown, because "20% to savings" is an idea and "R1,385 a week" is a decision. Under each preset sits a short card on where the rule came from and the catch that comes with it.

All four are written against take-home pay, after tax, not gross. That's the only input the tool needs. If you've set up a car deal on the finance and balloon tab, the car card reads it automatically and shows what the vehicle takes out of your budget, graded against the 20% all-in transport ceiling and against the bucket it lives in.

Zero-based budgeting and the envelope method appear as copy rather than sliders, on purpose. They're workflows for holding to a split, not ratios you can calculate. Pick a split here, then use either one to enforce it through the month.

If your rent or bond, transport and groceries already run past the needs slice, that's the reading to pay attention to. Switching to 60/30/10 and working the needs down over time is one response. Raiding the savings slice every month is what happens by default.

This splits income. It doesn't track spending, and a split is a target rather than a record of what you did.

Money Cat is an information tool, not financial advice. Confirm any figure that matters with your bank, lender or a registered professional.