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Budget planner

A budget could help you work out where your money is going and if you’re spending more or less than you can afford. In a nutshell, setting up a budget takes into account any income you’ve got coming in (your ‘incomings’) as well as any money you’ve got going out, such as regular bills (your ‘outgoings’). If that sounds like hard work, our online budget planner can help make it easy.

Using a budget planner can take the heavy lifting out of sorting out your budget – you simply enter in the amount of money you’ve got coming in (such as your salary) and then put in the expenses you’ve got coming out.

  

Not only is having a budget is a good way of finding out if you’re spending more or less money than you’ve got coming in, it’s also a good way of staying on track of your bills, as well as setting aside money to work towards savings goals.

Using a budget planner to work out your budget

A budget planner tool is essentially an online calculator that can be used to run the sums on your incomings and expenses. 

 

First up, the budget planner has fields to enter in your income. The most obvious stream of income is likely to be your salary or wages. To make it easier, you can select on the frequency you get paid (e.g. weekly, fortnightly or monthly).

Enter in your expenses

The next step is to include all your outgoings. Some of these might seem obvious, such as your mortgage or rent payments as well as electricity and other utilities, but others might take a bit more thinking about, such as how much you spend on going out, or lunch at work for example.

 

The good thing about using a budget planner is it includes a detailed list of possible expenses. That means it might prompt you to include some you could otherwise have forgotten.

Running the sums

Using a budget planner can take the heavy lifting out of doing the maths. Once you’ve included all your incomings and expenses, the planner can add them up and let you know exactly how much money you’ve got left over once all your expenses are covered. If you find you’ve got more money going out than what you’ve got coming in, you can use the planner to identify where you could be making savings.

Things you should know

This information does not take your personal objectives, circumstances or needs into account. Consider its appropriateness to these factors before acting on it. 

This calculator model contains a number of assumptions and they are set out in the i button. Please click it for more details. The assumptions may not reflect the ways in which our Bank's computer systems work. The calculator is generic and does not take into account your personal circumstances. It is intended for use by you as a guide only, and not intended to be relied on for the purposes of making a decision in relation to a financial product. Should you apply for any Westpac product, we will make our own calculations and we will not necessarily take the results of your calculations using this Calculator into account. You should obtain professional financial advice before making any financial decision.