Compare two monthly budgets.

Use the price for the period or purchase the field asks for. Then check how often that amount should count. Monthly rent, a weekly food shop and an occasional dinner need different schedules. Review the annual cash amount for each line to catch a misplaced frequency.

Some categories already count a year of spending inside their own calculation. The basket keeps those on an annual basis. Check the note on the line before changing the schedule, so an annual amount does not get counted again each month.

Match each category's input unit to its recurrence. The basket normalizes daily, weekly, monthly and annual entries to an annual cash amount. Review the resulting line totals rather than assuming identical-looking inputs represent the same period.

Categories that already annualize their costs are treated as annual entries. Their internal period takes precedence over an additional recurrence multiplier. This prevents an annual cost from being multiplied through the year a second time.

The annual cash total is the estimated money you would spend on the basket. Compare it with the pay that reaches your bank, while allowing for bills and savings you have left out. A basket of selected purchases is only part of a household budget.

The earnings figure asks a separate question: how much extra pay above the income you entered would leave enough money for this basket after wage taxes? It does not calculate the total salary you need from scratch.

Annual cash is the modeled outflow for the included purchases. It can be compared with annual net income once omitted obligations and saving are accounted for. The basket does not establish that the selected spending is affordable.

Annual gross is the additional earnings required, above the entered baseline income, to net the combined cash total. The calculation grosses up the basket once. Adding independently grossed-up purchases can give a different answer because tax rates can change across the additional earnings.

Copy your baseline to the alternative, then try a different rent, fewer meals out or a cheaper phone plan. The comparison shows the change in monthly cash remaining and working time. Use a one-time cash entry for moving costs, furniture or another bill that belongs only in the first year.

A car or home ownership estimate can cover years of costs. It is left out of this cash budget. Enter your actual payments, insurance and upkeep as cash expenses, with any down payment counted once. If you paid cash, enter that purchase payment once instead.

Copy the baseline and hold unrelated inputs fixed while testing a spending change. The cash difference is the direct budget effect; the gross-earnings difference expresses it under the model's incremental wage-tax assumptions. One-time cash entries affect the first-year result without reducing the recurring monthly balance.

Ownership categories retain their purchase assumptions but are excluded from the cash totals. Their lifetime costs and depreciation cannot stand in for a payment schedule. Enter recurring payments and operating costs explicitly, plus upfront cash as a one-time entry. One-time purchase categories affect only first-year cash.

Food, debt payments, care, insurance and saving can be easy to miss when you start with a few purchases. The coverage list shows groups with no entered cost and amounts still unknown. A group can appear covered even if you have entered only part of what you spend on it.

Leave amounts blank while you are finding them. Enter zero only when that cost really is absent. Extra cash expenses should include taxes and fees; the tool does not add purchase tax to those entries. Save a named result when you want to keep the inputs and figures for later.

Coverage flags identify unrepresented spending groups and null cash entries. They do not certify completeness within a group: a single meal entry represents food spending but may cover only a fraction of the household's food budget.

Cash-only expenses are entered inclusive of taxes and fees. They bypass category purchase-tax rules and join the aggregate before gross-up. Named scenarios preserve their original inputs and results; recalculation with current data is an explicit action.