Borrowing capacity calculator you control

It is as accurate as the figures and assumptions you feed it, and no more. The arithmetic here is straightforward: it works out what is left over each month, then works backwards to the loan size that repayment would service over the term you chose. A lender applies its own assessment rate, its own expense benchmark and its own income treatment, so a real assessment can land above or below this figure. Treat it as a range finder, not a decision.

Because we are a credit representative, not a rate publisher, and a rate typed into a web page goes stale quickly. Rates also differ by lender, product, loan purpose and your own circumstances, so a single number presented as the rate would be misleading. Setting it yourself keeps the estimate honest and lets you see how sensitive the result is when the rate moves.

It is an allowance this calculator adds to the rate you enter before working out what you could repay, so the estimate does not fall apart the moment rates move. We fixed it rather than asking you to choose, because most people have no way of knowing what to put and a form full of unfamiliar percentages is a good way to make someone give up. It is our assumption on this page, not a lender requirement and not a figure every lender uses. Lenders set their own and they differ. The 3% is shown in the working so you can see exactly what it did, and if you want to know what a particular lender would apply to you, ask us.

Lenders generally check your declared living expenses against a household spending benchmark rather than taking the figure at face value. How much weight a lender gives that benchmark is its own policy — some assess on the higher of the benchmark and your declared figure, others use it as a check on whether what you have declared looks plausible. We have deliberately not built a benchmark table into this page, because those figures belong to the lenders, they differ between them, and publishing an approximation as fact would be misleading. Leave the field blank and the calculator ignores it. Enter a figure you have been given and it will use the higher of it and your declared expenses.

Because a limit is money you could draw at any time, many lenders assess against the limit available rather than the balance you carry. This calculator applies 3% of your total limits each month as a commitment, and shows that line in the working. How each lender actually treats a limit varies, so treat the 3% as this page being cautious rather than as a rule. Listing a card and then removing it shows you what reducing or closing that limit would be worth.

The figures themselves, no. The calculation runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is submitted, stored, emailed, or passed to a lender or any other third party, and closing the tab clears it.
What this page does record is anonymous usage, the same as every other page on this site: that a calculation was started, that an estimate was produced and the broad band it landed in — under $500k, $500k to $750k, $750k to $1m, or over $1m — and whether the lender benchmark field was applied. No income, expense, debt, deposit or dollar amount you enter is ever included, and no name or contact detail is attached to any of it. We use it to know whether this page is worth maintaining, and for nothing else.

Use it to frame a conversation. If the estimate is in the region you need, the next step is working out which lenders suit your income type, your deposit position and your plans. If it is short, the useful questions are usually about structure: term, existing commitments, card limits and how income is evidenced. Book a session and we will go through your actual position rather than a placeholder one.