Household Budget Calculator (Scotland)

One household, one set of numbers

Every other calculator on this site answers one question: what is my take-home, what is the LBTT, will I lose Child Benefit. Real decisions cut across them. A pay rise changes your tax, your pension relief and possibly the Child Benefit charge at the same time; a dearer house changes the LBTT, the deposit, the mortgage and the council tax band together. This page holds all of those in one place, so the number that matters — what is actually left each month — moves as a whole when you change one input.

It does not contain any calculation of its own. Each adult's pay runs through the same Scottish income tax, National Insurance and student loan code as the Take-Home Pay Calculator; the Child Benefit line is the HICBC calculator's; the LBTT is the LBTT calculator's; the mortgage and council tax come from the same figures the Mortgage Affordability and Council Tax pages use. If any of those changes at a Budget, this changes with it.

The two rules that catch households out

The Child Benefit charge follows the higher earner, not the claimant. HMRC assesses the High Income Child Benefit Charge on whichever partner has the higher adjusted net income — salary less pension contributions — regardless of whose name the claim is in. The charge begins above £60,000 of adjusted net income and takes the whole benefit at £80,000. The calculator picks the higher earner automatically and shows the charge against their income, so a household with one earner just over the threshold and one well under sees the charge where HMRC will apply it.

Scottish rates change what a pension contribution costs. Because a contribution comes out before tax, take-home falls by less than the amount put in. In Scotland's higher and advanced bands the relief is worth more than in England, and above £100,000 a contribution also recovers Personal Allowance the taper is removing. The “what if” column shows the real monthly cost of a larger contribution against the amount going into the pension — usually the most useful single comparison on the page.

How to use the “what if” column

Fill in your household as it is, then tick What if I changed something? and enter a different pension contribution or a different house price. The second column shows the change to each line — take-home, tax and NI, Child Benefit kept, mortgage, the amount needed up front — and the new figure left each month. Nothing is recommended; the page shows the consequences under the assumptions you entered and leaves the decision where it belongs.

The mortgage lines use the rate and term you enter, and flag whether the loan is within 4.5 times household income — the multiple most lenders work to before stress-testing. That is a rule of thumb rather than an offer; lenders assess outgoings and credit history too, and the Mortgage Affordability Calculator models the stress test.

What is deliberately left out

The monthly figure is what is left after the four things this site can calculate from a salary and a house: tax, benefits, the mortgage and council tax. It does not include energy, insurance, childcare, food, transport or debt repayments, and it does not include the cost of maintaining or improving the home — none of those can be modelled honestly from these inputs, and a made-up allowance would be worse than none. Read the figure as “before everything else”, and use it to compare two versions of your household rather than as a budget in itself.