About What Can I Afford?
Helping ordinary Australians make better decisions with their money.
What Can I Afford was created by an ordinary Australian who, like you, has found that managing money to live within our means, stay out of debt, save for a rainy day, buy a house, and afford a holiday once in a while – on an average Australian income – is a skill that can be learned.
Spending above our means and getting into debt is easy. Living within our means is harder, but you're not alone.
What Can I Afford is an Australian financial calculator website designed to help people understand their income, expenses, debts and affordability before making important financial decisions.
We believe that knowing what you can actually afford is one of the most important parts of managing your money.
Why we created What Can I Afford?
When it comes to managing on an ordinary salary, we can't afford to bury our head in the sand. If it feels too hard, we're here to help with tools, calculators and tips to help make budgeting and spending within our means more straightforward.
The starting point is understanding that your salary isn't the same as the amount of money you have available to spend.
Once income tax, Medicare and other deductions are taken into account, the amount that reaches your bank account can be significantly different from your gross salary.
And even knowing your take-home pay isn't enough.
You also need to understand how much you can comfortably spend on housing, transport, food, debt repayments, savings and the other costs of running a household.
What Can I Afford? was created to make those calculations easier.
Our calculators
We are building a collection of simple, practical calculators designed for Australians, including:
- Australian take-home pay calculations
- Household affordability calculations
- Debt repayment and debt snowball calculations
- Household budgeting
- Mortgage and housing affordability
- Other personal finance and budgeting tools
Our calculators are designed to give you a useful starting point for understanding your financial position.
Our approach
Simple — Financial calculations shouldn't require a finance degree to understand.
Practical — We focus on questions that people actually face when managing their money.
Transparent — We explain the assumptions behind our calculations and make clear that estimates may differ from your individual circumstances.
Australian — Our calculators and examples are designed primarily for people living and working in Australia.
About the calculations
Our calculators use published Australian tax and financial information where applicable. Tax rates, thresholds, repayment rules and other financial settings can change, so we review our calculations and update them when appropriate.
Individual circumstances can also produce different results. For example, your actual take-home pay may be affected by HELP/HECS debt, salary sacrifice, tax offsets, Medicare levy circumstances, deductions, salary packaging and other factors.
For this reason, our calculators are intended for general budgeting and planning rather than as personalised financial advice.
A useful starting point
Whether you're comparing a new salary, considering a house or rental property, trying to reduce your debt or simply working out where your money is going, our aim is to help you make sense of the numbers.
Start with our free Australian Take-Home Pay Calculator to see what your salary could mean in weekly, fortnightly and monthly terms.
Then use our Affordability Calculator and Debt Snowball Calculator to look at the bigger picture.