Exercise 1: When Needs Alone Exceed the 50% Target — Possible Solution
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Under the 50/30/20 rule, £2,400/month after tax should ideally split
into £1,200 for needs (50%), £720 for wants (30%), and £480 for
savings/extra debt repayment (20%). But this person's real,
unavoidable needs total £1,500/month - already £300 above the entire
50% target, and that's before a single pound has gone toward wants or
savings at all.

This is exactly the chapter's own honest limitation in action: the
50/30/20 split assumes needs genuinely fit within half of income, and
when they don't - as here - the remaining 30/20 split for wants and
savings becomes mathematically impossible to hit as stated.
Continuing to force the exact percentages would mean either
understating what actually counts as a real "need," or running a
genuine deficit trying to hit numbers the real budget can't support.
The honest response isn't to abandon budgeting - it's to recognize
that the specific percentages need adjusting to reality, even while
the underlying three-category idea (track needs, wants, and savings
separately) still remains useful.

ANSWER: This creates a real problem because £1,500 in needs already
exceeds the entire £1,200 (50%) target, leaving nothing for the
intended wants (30%) and savings (20%) categories to work with as
stated. This is precisely the situation the chapter's own honest
limitation describes - the 50/30/20 split assumes needs fit within
half of income, and when real needs genuinely exceed that, the fixed
percentages become impossible to hit, even though the underlying idea
of tracking the three categories still has value.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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This correctly does the real arithmetic showing the specific shortfall
and connects it directly to the chapter's own stated limitation, rather
than treating the 50/30/20 percentages as always achievable regardless
of real income and cost of living.