Budget Health Check: Grade Every Category
Enter what you actually spent last month by category and get a green, yellow or red grade for each against healthy share-of-income bands — the fastest diagnosis of where a budget leaks.
How to use this calculator
Run the numbers once, write the result where you will see it, and let the free expense tracker do the weekly work: it sorts every entry into needs, wants and savings automatically, so drift from the plan is visible the moment it starts instead of at the end of the month. A calculator sets the target; tracking is what actually gets you there.
What the bands mean
Each category has a healthy ceiling as a share of take-home: housing 28%, food 12%, transport 12%, utilities 7%, fun 7%, health 4%, shopping 4%, subscriptions 3%, with savings graded in reverse at 20% or more. Land at or under the cap and the category is green. Up to a quarter over the cap is yellow — watch it. Beyond that is red, and red means one thing only: this category is next month’s project. The grades are diagnosis, not judgment; a red category is simply where the next dollar of effort buys the most improvement.
Red is information, not failure
Every budget has a red category somewhere — the point of grading all nine at once is that usually only one or two are red and everything else is fine. That is the anti-panic finding: you do not have a spending problem, you have a transport problem, or a subscription problem, one category wide. The overall count in the results makes it official — most honest first-time checks come back five green, three yellow, one red, which is a fixable budget, not a broken one.
Why savings gets graded too
Savings is graded against a floor, not a ceiling, because it is the category that pays future you. Under 10% of take-home is red not as an insult but as arithmetic: at that rate an emergency fund takes half a decade, and every year of delay is a year the next flat tire goes on a card. Ten to twenty is the yellow build zone — legitimately fine during aggressive debt payoff. Twenty or more with the debts handled is the green zone where goals start arriving early.
From grades to the one next step
Take the single reddest category and set one target for next month: a number 20% below this month, entered in the tracker as a ceiling. Do not rebuild the budget, do not cut five categories — one red category, one lever, one month. The check runs again in thirty days for the price of ten minutes, and the sequence of monthly re-gradings is what a working budget actually looks like from the inside: not a plan you obey, but a number you nudge.
Frequently asked questions
My housing is red — now what?
Housing at 35% or more of take-home is the one red that no coffee sacrifice fixes: it needs the big levers — a roommate, a renegotiation at renewal, or a move at lease end. It is also the highest-value fix in all of budgeting; a 5-point housing improvement beats every other category combined.
Are these caps before or after tax?
After — every percentage here is a share of take-home pay, because that is the money that actually makes decisions. Gross-income budgets systematically understate how tight the real constraint is.
Where do debt payments go?
Minimums count inside their natural category — car loans inside transport, mostly. Extra principal payments belong in savings, because they are optional and they are building your net worth; grade them accordingly.