Lekhhaa is a free expense tracker and bill-splitting app built for India. It lets you record income and expenses, split bills with friends or groups, track who owes what, and settle up — all in one place. It works like a digital khata book with Splitwise-like features, available on Android, iOS, and the web.

Is Lekhhaa free to use?

Yes, Lekhhaa is free to use. You can track expenses, split bills, manage groups, and settle up without paying anything. The app is available at no cost on Android, iOS, and web.

How does bill splitting work in Lekhhaa?

Add an expense, choose the friends or group members to split it with, and Lekhhaa automatically calculates who owes how much. You can split equally or by custom amounts. The app tracks all balances and tells you the simplest way to settle up with fewest transactions.

What is the difference between Lekhhaa and Splitwise?

Lekhhaa is a Splitwise alternative built specifically for India. It supports Indian languages including Hindi, works with INR by default, includes a personal expense and income tracker (not just group bills), and functions as a digital khata book for daily money management — all for free.

Can I use Lekhhaa to track personal expenses, not just split bills?

Yes. Lekhhaa has a full personal finance tracker built in. You can log daily income and expenses, view spending by category, generate reports, and manage your budget — separately from any group or bill-splitting activity.

Does Lekhhaa work in Hindi?

Yes. Lekhhaa supports Hindi and is designed for Indian users. The app includes Hindi language support and is available at lekhhaa.com/hi for the Hindi version.

Is my financial data safe on Lekhhaa?

Lekhhaa uses data encryption and secure storage to protect your financial information. Your expense and income data is stored securely and is not shared with third parties.

What is the 50/30/20 rule of budgeting?

Split your take-home income three ways: 50% to needs (rent, groceries, utilities, commute, insurance, essential EMIs), 30% to wants (eating out, shopping, subscriptions, travel), and 20% to savings and extra debt repayment (SIPs, emergency fund, prepayments).

Does the 50/30/20 rule work on a ₹30,000 salary in India?

Usually in modified form. On early-career salaries, needs legitimately take 60-70%, so a 70/20/10 split is more realistic — the priority is saving a consistent 10% and building the tracking habit, then improving the ratio as income grows.

Is an EMI a need or a want in the 50/30/20 rule?

Classify the EMI by what it bought. Home loan and education loan EMIs sit in needs; gadget EMIs and BNPL instalments are wants that happen to be automated. Counting consumption EMIs as savings is the most common way the rule gets gamed.

Where does money sent to parents fit in the 50/30/20 rule?

Treat family support as a fixed first charge: subtract it from take-home income before applying the ratio. Sending ₹10,000 home from a ₹60,000 salary means running 50/30/20 on ₹50,000 — cleaner than distorting the needs bucket.

How do I start using the 50/30/20 rule?

Track one full month of real spending in a free expense tracker like Lekhhaa to find your actual needs/wants split, automate the savings share for the day after salary credit, set category budgets for wants, and review the buckets for ten minutes each month.

The 50/30/20 Rule for Indian Salaries: How It Works and When to Bend It

The 50/30/20 rule is the most-quoted budgeting formula in the world: put 50% of your take-home income towards needs, 30% towards wants, and 20% towards savings and debt repayment. It is popular because it replaces a hundred spending decisions with three buckets. But it was designed around Western costs of living, and applying it blindly to an Indian salary — especially in a metro, especially with family responsibilities — leads to quiet failure and unnecessary guilt. Here is how the rule actually works, where it breaks in India, and how to adapt it honestly.

The Rule in One Example

Take a take-home salary of ₹60,000 a month. Under 50/30/20: ₹30,000 goes to needs — rent, groceries, electricity, gas, commute, phone and internet, insurance premiums, minimum EMI payments, school fees. ₹18,000 goes to wants — eating out, OTT subscriptions, shopping beyond basics, travel, hobbies, the upgraded phone. ₹12,000 goes to savings and extra debt repayment — SIPs, PPF, emergency fund, prepaying loans. The test for any expense: a need is something with real consequences if unpaid this month; a want is everything you could pause without your life breaking; savings is money that buys future freedom.

Where the Rule Breaks in India

Metro rent eats the needs bucket - In Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi or Gurgaon, rent alone often takes 30-40% of a young professional's take-home. Add commute, groceries and utilities, and needs land at 60-65%, not 50. That does not mean you are failing — it means the ratio needs adjusting, or the rent does (which is why sharing flats is the single biggest budgeting lever for young Indians).

Family support is a category the rule forgot - Millions of Indians send money home every month. It is not a want, and calling it a need still distorts the math. Treat family support as a fixed first charge on income: subtract it, then apply your ratio to what remains. A ₹60,000 salary with ₹10,000 sent home is a ₹50,000 budget.

EMIs blur the buckets - A home loan EMI is a need (and partly forced saving). A gadget EMI or BNPL instalment is a want that has disguised itself as an obligation. Sort EMIs by what they bought, not by the fact that they are automatic.

Irregular income breaks monthly ratios - Freelancers and commission earners should apply the ratio to a conservative baseline month, bank the surplus in good months, and let the savings bucket absorb the volatility.

Honest Variants That Work Here

60/20/20 for metro renters - Accept 60% needs while you are in the high-rent phase, protect 20% savings as non-negotiable, and fit wants into what is left. Never balance the equation by cutting savings first — that is how the rule dies.

70/20/10 for early career - On a first salary of ₹25,000-₹35,000, needs legitimately dominate. Saving even 10% consistently matters more than hitting a textbook ratio, because the habit compounds long before the amounts do.

50/20/30 for high earners - If your income has grown well past your lifestyle, flip wants and savings: 30% invested every month builds wealth at a pace that makes later ratios irrelevant.

How to Actually Implement It

Step 1: Find your real numbers first - Do not guess your buckets — measure them. Track one full month of spending in a free expense tracker like Lekhhaa, tagging each expense as you log it. Almost everyone discovers their "wants" number is 10-15 percentage points higher than they believed, mostly through food delivery, quick-commerce top-ups and small UPI payments that never felt like spending.

Step 2: Automate the 20 first - The savings bucket only survives if it leaves your account before you can spend it. Set SIPs and transfers for the day after salary credit. What remains is genuinely spendable, and the rule enforces itself.

Step 3: Set category budgets, not one big cap - Split your wants bucket into 3-4 real categories — eating out, shopping, entertainment, travel fund — with monthly limits in your budget planner. One combined "wants" number always gets spent on the first two categories by mid-month.

Step 4: Review on a fixed day - Ten minutes after each salary credit: check last month's actuals against the buckets, adjust one thing, move on. The rule is a compass, not a court.

The Mistakes That Kill It

Counting EMI-funded consumption as savings. Classifying comfort as necessity ("I need the bigger flat"). Abandoning the whole system after one bad festival month instead of letting the next month absorb it. And the biggest one: budgeting from memory instead of from tracked data — a ratio applied to imaginary numbers produces imaginary control.

The Bottom Line

The 50/30/20 rule is a starting grid, not a law. Measure your real spending for a month, subtract fixed family commitments first, pick the variant that matches your rent reality and career stage, automate the savings share, and track the rest against category budgets. The households that win with this rule are not the ones that hit 50/30/20 exactly — they are the ones that know their actual numbers every month.