Calculate your DTI ratio in seconds. See where you stand for mortgage and loan qualification — and exactly what you'd need to do to improve it.
Use your gross (pre-tax) monthly income from all sources.
Your debt-to-income ratio (DTI) is the percentage of your gross monthly income that goes toward paying your monthly debt obligations. It's calculated by dividing your total monthly debt payments by your gross monthly income and multiplying by 100. If you earn $5,000 per month before taxes and pay $1,500 per month in debt obligations, your DTI is 30%.
DTI is one of the most important numbers lenders look at when you apply for a mortgage, auto loan, personal loan, or credit card. It tells them whether you have enough income to comfortably take on additional debt. A low DTI signals financial health and repayment capacity. A high DTI signals that you're already stretched and may struggle with additional obligations.
Lenders often calculate two types of DTI. Front-end DTI (also called the housing ratio) includes only housing-related expenses — mortgage principal and interest, property taxes, homeowner's insurance, and HOA fees. Back-end DTI includes all monthly debt obligations: housing, credit cards, student loans, auto loans, personal loans, and any other recurring debt payments. When lenders talk about DTI qualification thresholds, they typically mean back-end DTI, which is what this calculator computes.
The traditional guideline is to keep your total DTI below 36%, with no more than 28% going toward housing costs. Many conventional mortgage lenders use 43% as their maximum DTI threshold. FHA loans may allow up to 50% DTI in some circumstances. The lower your DTI, the better your terms will be.
Include: Mortgage or rent payment, credit card minimum payments, auto loan payments, student loan payments, personal loan payments, child support or alimony, any other required monthly debt payment.
Do not include: Utilities, groceries, insurance premiums (non-mortgage), cell phone bills, subscriptions, or any discretionary spending. DTI is specifically about debt obligations, not total expenses.
There are only two ways to improve DTI: increase your income or decrease your monthly debt payments. Decreasing debt payments means either paying down balances (which reduces minimum payments) or eliminating debts entirely. Use our debt payoff calculator and multi-debt planner to build a plan that systematically reduces your monthly debt obligations. Every debt you eliminate improves your DTI — and using the debt avalanche or snowball method means you're eliminating individual debts completely rather than chipping away at all of them slowly.