What can you afford on $90,000?
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
$2,527
a fortnight, or $1,263 a week. That is $65,698 a year after PAYE, ACC and KiwiSaver at 3.5%. Full breakdown
Step 2 · Rent you can carry
$379 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
$1,769
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
$303,305
at 6.5% over 30 years, keeping repayments inside 35% of your take-home ($884 a fortnight). A bank may well approve more; this is what stays comfortable. Model a real loan
Step 5 · The honest bit about buying
$336,695 short
A $800,000 first home needs $640,000 of lending after a 20% deposit. On this income alone you are $336,695 short of that, which in practice means a second income, a bigger deposit, or a cheaper house. Nobody enjoys reading that, but it is the actual position.
Step 6 · The deposit
$160,000 · 10.4 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 10.4 years $25,000 8.7 years $50,000 6.9 years $100,000 3.7 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 $1,769 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.