Expense Reduction Finder

This calculator checks your spending in five common categories — housing, transportation, food, subscriptions, and discretionary — against benchmark percentages of your gross monthly income: 28% for housing, 15% for transportation, 12% for food, 5% for subscriptions, and 10% for discretionary spending. For each category, if what you're actually spending exceeds the dollar amount that benchmark implies, the excess is counted as potential monthly savings for that category; categories already at or under benchmark contribute nothing (the calculator never suggests spending more). Summing the five category gaps gives your total potential monthly and annual savings, and total spending across all five categories divided by income gives your overall expense-to-income ratio. These benchmarks are general guidelines, not requirements — the housing figure in particular assumes a fairly typical cost-of-living area, and someone in a high-cost city will often run well above 28% for housing while still being financially healthy in other ways, so don't treat that single line as a verdict on your budget.

The calculator also only evaluates the five categories you enter; it says nothing about debt payments, childcare, insurance premiums, or other recurring costs that don't fall neatly into these buckets. And "potential savings" assumes you trim exactly down to the benchmark, not below it — the real opportunity in any category might be larger or smaller depending on your specific circumstances and priorities. Use the category with the largest gap as a starting point for where to focus first, since that's where you'll get the most impact for the least behavior change.