Turn your income and living costs into a clear monthly surplus, savings rate and commitment ratio — the figures that decide what a loan can actually serve.
What the Budget Planner estimates
A budget is not a moral exercise. It is the cashflow your finances actually run on, and it is where serviceability begins. Enter your take-home income, tell the tool how often you are paid, then add your housing, utilities, food, transport, loan repayments and discretionary spend. The calculator normalises everything to a monthly figure and returns your surplus — the money left after every cost is met — along with your savings rate and your commitment ratio.
What drives the number
Two households on the same income can land in very different places. The surplus is sensitive to the things that quietly compound: a high housing cost, a car loan still running, subscriptions that never got cancelled. The commitment ratio — housing plus repayments measured against income — is the figure a lender watches most closely, because it signals how much room is left to service new debt. Your real budget and a lender's assessment will not match exactly: lenders apply their own expense benchmarks, shade some income, and test your repayments above the rate you actually pay. Knowing your own number first is how you read theirs.
Use it as a starting point
Treat the surplus as a diagnosis, not a verdict. If it is thinner than you would like, the levers are usually structural — which debts to retire first, how a refinance reshapes the monthly figure, which lender's policy fits the way you earn. Book a strategy session and we will work through your real numbers and what they make possible.
General information only — not personal financial product or credit advice. The estimate is indicative and depends on each lender's policy, current rates and your full circumstances. AeFin is an Australian Credit Representative (CR 464548) of Finsure (ACL 384704).