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About this tool
Plan a monthly student budget across mess, rent, travel, books and personal spends — see surplus, category shares and a 50/30/20 check.
This planner computes a student's monthly surplus or deficit — money in from allowance, stipend or part-time work minus spending on mess, rent, travel, books, phone, outings and subscriptions. Each category is shown as a share of total spending, and the whole budget is checked against the 50/30/20 rule (at most 50% of income on needs, 30% on wants, at least 20% kept aside) popularised in Elizabeth Warren's "All Your Worth". It is built for hostel and PG students who want to know exactly where the month's money goes.
Open Student Budget Planner Monthly on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
One number tells you whether the month closes in the green or the red.
See what percentage of spending each category eats, so the biggest leak is obvious.
Needs, wants and savings are compared against the classic caps with over/short flags.
Start from money in, list fixed needs first (mess, rent, commute, phone), cap flexible wants (outings, subscriptions), and treat whatever is planned to remain as savings. The 50/30/20 rule — 50% needs, 30% wants, 20% saved — is a useful reference, though hostel students often need more than 50% on needs and should adjust the wants side instead.
Spend at most 50% of take-home money on needs, at most 30% on wants, and keep at least 20% aside for savings or goals. It comes from Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi's book "All Your Worth" (2005) and works as a sanity check rather than a strict law — this planner flags which of the three buckets is over or short.
It varies hugely by city and living setup — a shared PG in a metro can cost more in rent alone than a full hostel package in a smaller town, so a realistic range runs from a few thousand rupees to Rs 25,000+ per month. That is exactly why this planner asks for your own numbers instead of assuming an average.
Fix a savings amount first and budget the rest, rather than saving whatever is left. The category-share table shows which head takes the biggest slice — mess add-ons, commute and subscriptions are the usual trims — and the 50/30/20 check tells you when wants are crowding out savings.
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