Methodology

Our methodology

Last updated August 22, 2026 · Full paper in progress

Short version. MoneyBadger's defaults come from peer-reviewed research and publicly-sourced data, not from a proprietary black box. Every recommendation can be traced back to a source.

The model

Your steady take-home runs the plan. Variable pay rides on top.

Essential-worker pay does not behave like a salary. So we don't budget the blended total. The 50/30/20 runs on your steady take-home, and the pay that comes and goes is planned on top, routed in order to your safety net, then your goals, then your future.

The reading itself is public: the pay-code dictionaries list every earning, deduction and tax line we recognize for each profession, and where each one came from.

Steady take-home

The pay you can count on.

Base, longevity, differentials that arrive every cycle. Your monthly life is built on this, split needs / wants / future-you, tuned per profession.

Variable pay

The pay that comes and goes.

Overtime and details for the firehouse and the precinct. Per-diem and pick-up shifts on the hospital unit. Never budgeted into lifestyle, routed to the waterfall on top, so a slow month never breaks the plan. Active duty is the exception: the special and incentive pays that arrive every cycle are steady money and sit inside the plan, and a lump bonus is carved out on its own: one-time money, counted at what lands after the supplemental withholding, and kept out of the monthly base.

Reserve

Where the extra goes first.

Emergency reserve, then high-interest debt, then future-you. A heavy month builds the cushion instead of vanishing.

Firefighterfirehouse meals + municipal health benefits shift the mix inside the split

Police officerpatrol miles wear out a personal vehicle, so transportation takes 9 percent of take-home rather than the 8 every other profession gets; municipal health benefits hold healthcare at 1 percent

Active militaryBAH, BAS, and TRICARE sit outside base pay

Registered nursehospital health benefits and scrubs shift the mix inside the split; most staff nurses have no pension, so the future slice is genuinely theirs to fund

Needs Wants Future-you

Debt does not wait for an overtime month. The waterfall is where extra money goes, and it has never been the only path. Once the steady money available to your plan covers the essentials floor, a plan with debt moves 5 percent of the take-home it runs on out of Wants and sets it aside for debt, every month, before a single extra hour is worked, and the move that follows points the money at your highest rate first. If the steady money available to the plan is short of essentials, the plan holds that extra payment and works on the gap first. Anything beyond that has a named home in the split as well: the Goals and Extra line is built for named goals and for debt beyond the minimum, and when your emergency fund is full, three quarters of what it was taking rolls into it. This matters most for active duty, who have no overtime to route. A heavy month adds to the work. It was never the only way through.

Sources

Where the defaults come from

SplitElizabeth Warren & Amelia Warren Tyagi (2005), All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan. See also: University of Pennsylvania SRFS, Popular Budgeting Strategies (50/20/30 and other methods).the 50/30/20 rule

Cat.BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys · USDA Food Plans · MIT Living Wage Calculatorcategory baselines by geography

Bench.The Essentials Benchmark: what a working life costs, county by county, assembled from HUD Fair Market Rents, USDA Food Plans, BLS CES, and state childcare market-rate surveyspost-tax essentials · every line sourced

Behav.Thaler & Benartzi (2004), Save More Tomorrow, Journal of Political Economywhy pre-allocation beats tracking

Prof.Pensions, 457(b)/403(b)/TSP eligibility, union dues, PSLF, state tax treatmentrule-based and explainable

The engineering behind the model is ours: the vision-language extraction, two-axis classification, and reconciliation architecture that reads a paystub into this plan is the subject of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 64/086,646, filed June 9, 2026. Patent pending.

What's coming. A full methodology paper (every default, the source behind it, and the sensitivity analysis) is in progress. If you want it sooner, email feedback@moneybadger.us.

See the model run on your numbers.

The full per-profession splits, and the citations behind each one, live in the calculator.

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