What can you afford on $170,000?
One salary, followed all the way through: what lands in your account, what rent that supports, and what it means for buying. Based on 2026/27 rates, on this income alone.
Step 1 · What actually lands
$4,436
a fortnight, or $2,218 a week. That is $115,331 a year after PAYE, ACC and KiwiSaver at 3.5%. Full breakdown
Step 2 · Rent you can carry
$665 a week
Housing costs above 30% of take-home are the standard housing-stress line, so this is the comfortable ceiling rather than the maximum you could physically pay. Try your own rent
Step 3 · What is left after rent
$3,105
a fortnight for everything else: food, power, transport, debt, saving, living. This is the number that decides whether a budget works, and the one most calculators never show you.
Step 4 · What you could borrow
$532,448
at 6.5% over 30 years, keeping repayments inside 35% of your take-home ($1,553 a fortnight). A bank may well approve more; this is what stays comfortable. Model a real loan
Step 5 · The honest bit about buying
$107,552 to bridge
A $800,000 first home needs $640,000 of lending after a 20% deposit, and this income gets you most of the way. A slightly larger deposit, a cheaper place, or any second income closes it.
Step 6 · The deposit
$160,000 · 6.3 years
20% of $800,000, saving 20% of your take-home at 3% a year, starting from nothing.
Most first-home deposits lean on KiwiSaver. Here is how much that moves it: In KiwiSaver Time to the deposit Nothing 6.3 years $25,000 5.3 years $50,000 4.3 years $100,000 2.3 years Those balances are illustrations, not a guess at yours. Put your real KiwiSaver in
This is the picture. A budget is how you change it.
Knowing you have $3,105 a fortnight spare is only useful if you know where it actually goes.
Start tracking, free →What this assumes
- One income, no other earners in the household.
- KiwiSaver at 3.5%, no student loan.
- Rent capped at 30% of take-home (the housing-stress line), mortgage repayments at 35%.
- $800,000 reference first home, 6.5% over 30 years.
- The headline deposit figure saves from zero. The table above shows what a KiwiSaver first-home withdrawal does to it, less the $1,000 you must leave behind.