Monthly Budget Planner — India Edition

Why the 50-30-20 rule works for Indian households

50% on needs (rent, groceries, EMIs, utilities, school fees), 30% on wants (eating out, OTT, travel, hobbies) and 20% on savings and investments. The rule is American in origin, but it survives translation to India well — because Indian households tend to have lower discretionary slack, the discipline of carving out 20% upfront is exactly what makes long-term equity SIPs feasible on a middle-class income.

What the template auto-calculates

• Monthly take-home → 50/30/20 target rupees
• Actual category spend vs budget — colour-coded variance
• Annual roll-up: 12-month trend per category
• Savings rate as a % of gross income
• Emergency fund coverage in months

How to use it for the first 90 days

Month 1 is observation: just record actuals against the 24 categories without trying to hit any target. Month 2 introduces targets only on the three categories that overshot the most; ignore the rest. Month 3 is the real budget — by then you have your own data, not a textbook number, and the targets are realistic. Most households waste the first month trying to enforce a fantasy budget; the template explicitly tells you not to.

From budget to wealth — the 20% question

The hardest line on any budget is the 20% savings line. The template adds a small calculator at the bottom that turns your monthly savings number into a 20-year SIP corpus at 12% CAGR — for most users, this is a more motivating number than any spreadsheet column. Once you commit to a number, route it through our SIP calculator to pick a fund category, or use the EMI calculator if a chunk of that 20% is going to home-loan prepayment instead.

Disclaimer: The template is a planning tool, not financial advice. Returns assumptions are illustrative.