Where does your salary actually go?
A simple rule that splits your salary into three shares, so you can see where your money goes without counting every pound by hand.
📰 MoneyLoop Weekly | Every week we take one topic on Egyptian households’ minds and tell you what it means for your pocket, and what to do with your money. No jargon, no recommendations.
Hi there 👋🏼,
Quick question, and no opening your banking app or your messages: how much did you spend on food last month? If you answered with a rough number, you’re like almost everyone else. And if you compare that number to what actually happened, the gap is usually in the thousands.
That gap is why the same question comes back every single month.
Money doesn’t disappear — it gets spread around without a decision
Every pound in your salary ends up somewhere, whether you decided it or not. The only difference is that what you decide gets counted, and what decides itself slips past you.
The easiest place to start is giving every pound a share before you give it a name.
Split your salary into three shares
There’s a simple rule called 50/30/20, made popular by the book All Your Worth by Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi in 2005. You split your net income like this:
- 50% needs: what your life stops without.
- 30% wants: what makes life nicer, but can wait.
- 20% future: savings, an emergency fund, paying off debt.
On a salary of 18,000 pounds, that works out as:
- 9,000 pounds for rent, bills, transport, household shopping and essential instalments.
- 5,400 pounds for going out, subscriptions, deliveries and clothes.
- 3,600 pounds for savings and your emergency fund.
But what if 50% doesn’t cover it? 🤔
That’s the first wall you’ll hit, and it’s a fair one. The rule is a starting point, not a law, and 60/20/20, or even 70/20/10, is still a plan.
Only one thing really matters: the future share comes out the day your salary lands, not from whatever is left at the end of the month — because there usually isn’t any. And if the number feels too big right now, start at 5%; early on, the habit matters more than the amount.
How to start today
- Work out your net income: what actually lands in your account, not the gross figure.
- Split one past month into the three shares: and see where your real percentages sit.
- Set a budget per share: and start next month on the split that fits you.
Step two is where most people stop, because it needs every expense already recorded. In MoneyLoop, your spending is logged and categorised on its own from your bank SMS, and you can set a budget per share and watch it live — so you know your real percentages without typing a thing.
In the end,
You don’t need a bigger salary to know where it goes — you need a split.
This content is general financial education, not personal advice for your situation.
