Tools like Mint are great for automating your expense tracking and monitoring your personal finances. However, sometimes too much automation can make it easier to overlook your monthly expenses and budget as a whole.
You become focused on the day to day expenses, but you're not tracking your monthly budget and recurring expenses as a whole. Thankfully we have a solution.
At Money Goody, we're firm believers in taking control of your money and your budget. Personal finance tools shouldn't be looked at as an alternative to tracking your money. They are helpful aids to make things a little easier. Manually tracking and reviewing your budget is the most definitive way to make sure you're on track on a monthly basis.
With our free Monthly Budget Spreadsheet, you can track all of your bills, recurring expenses and income on a weekly and monthly basis.
Take Control
Manually entering your expenses gives you more control over your money.
Track Expenses
Know exactly where your money is going, and catch bad spending habits.
Focus on Saving
Set goals and save money for your goals like buying a home or new car.
Easy Budgeting
See how much money you have leftover each week and budget accordingly.
For Excel & Google Spreadsheets
This budgeting template/spreadsheet is for everyone who wants a quick and simple way to track their expenses and start budgeting.
Let's work through the organization of the spreadsheet from top to bottom.
The very first section lists dates. These are organized weekly, and set for 2016. And of course, you get to look at our beautiful logo!
In the next section, you'll enter your income. This is the amount of money you have coming in for that week. If you get paid bi-weekly, simply list the amount of money you have left over from the previous paycheck for the weeks you don't get paid (this will be calculated for you in the spreadsheet).
For example, if you were paid $1500 on January 1st, then at the end of that week you have $750 left from that paycheck, you'd put $750 for the income in the January 8th week.
The spreadsheet is divided into eight different "bucket" where your income will be divided into.
- Savings: All of your different savings accounts such as investments, vacation funds, Christmas savings and anything else you're saving up for.
- Housing: This includes your living costs, which will likely be either a mortgage or rent.
- Utilities: All of your monthly recurring expenses such as gas, heat, electricity and internet.
- Food: All of your food related expenses such as grocery shopping or dining out.
- Transportation: Any expenses related to your transportation such as your car payments, insurance, maintenance/repairs, public transportation or Uber.
- Personal: These are expenses that could technically be classified as your "optional" expenses. Things like a gym membership, pet food, Netflix or music subscriptions.
- Medical/Health: Your health/dental insurance, out-of-pocket expenses or even medi-spa treatments.
- Debts: Any debts you're currently paying off such as credit cards or student loans.
Lastly, at the bottom of the spreadsheet there's a section for total expenses and your remaining funds.
Total expenses simply adds up everything you entered in your buckets. The remaining funds section subtracts your total expenses from your income you entered. As you can see in the example below, we entered $100 for debts, which creates a total expenses of $100 and $1400 in remaining funds ($1500-$100). Simple!
This spreadsheet is completely customizable. You can change the expenses, bucket names, or even add your additional expenses. The idea is to give you a template that's easy to use and get you in the habit of controlling how you spread out your income.
SORRY, BUT THE SPREADSHEET IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE. PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER. THANKS!
As a spreadsheet nerd, I can definitely appreciate this. Looks like a great download and I hope lots of people download it and use it!
Thanks David! It’s a pretty handy spreadsheet that a lot of people can definitely use.