How much rent can you actually afford?

Rent is most Kiwis' biggest weekly cost, and the "can we afford this place?" question is surprisingly hard to answer well. So here's a new free tool to make it simple.

The Rent Affordability Calculator tells you the weekly rent you can comfortably afford. Two things make it more honest than the usual ones:

• It uses your take-home pay, not your gross salary. Rent comes out of what actually lands in your bank. We run your income through PAYE, ACC, KiwiSaver and student loan first, then apply the 30% housing-stress rule to what's left.
• It's weekly, like NZ rents actually are, and you can add a partner or flatmate's income for the household total (each taxed correctly on their own).

Pop in a rent and it shows you the band (comfortable, stretched, or rent stress), what percentage of your take-home that is, and how much you'd have left each week for everything else.

That last number is the point: once rent's sorted, the rest of your pay is what budgeting is really about. Track where it goes, free, with KeaBudget.

Built in the open, as always. Tell us what you think at hello@keabudget.co.nz.