Rent affordability calculator

Give the rest of your pay a place first

Start with your take-home pay. Take off essentials, savings, everyday spending and breathing room. What’s left, as a weekly figure, is the most rent this plan can cover. At that figure every dollar of your pay has a job, so a place that costs a little less leaves you some spare.

Enter your own share of pay and costs. Count minimum debt repayments and money for yearly bills as essentials. If you get Rent Assistance and it’s confirmed, add it to your take-home pay once.

Weekly, fortnightly and monthly amounts use 52, 26 and 12 pays a year. These are averages, and a month isn’t four weeks. Before you sign a lease, check when rent is due against your paydays.

Riley’s fortnightly plan

Riley is made up. Riley takes home $2,100 a fortnight and earns $2,500 before tax. After $850 for essentials, $200 savings, $200 everyday spending and $150 breathing room, $700 is left each fortnight: $350 a week for rent. A $320 listing would leave $60 spare each fortnight.

30% of Riley’s pay before tax is $375 a week, $25 more than the plan leaves. Going by 30% alone, Riley would sign up for more rent than the rest of the plan allows.

Where the 30% figure comes from

You’ll often hear that rent should be no more than 30% of your income. It comes from how the ABS measures housing stress: lower-income households that spend more than 30% of their gross household income on housing. It’s a way to count households, not a personal rent limit.

The calculator shows 30% of the pay before tax you enter beside your plan, so you can see how far apart they are. It doesn’t tell you whether your household is in housing stress.

This is a cash plan to learn from, not a rental application check or a guarantee. It leaves out bond, rent in advance and moving costs. Try a lower pay and higher bills too. Use the budget planner for a fuller budget and the moving-out calculator for the cash you need upfront.