I preach the value of doing a new budget every single month and how important it is to get in the habit of planning every dollar that will come in. In doing so, I get a lot of feedback dominated by eye rolls and smirks. Apparently a lot of you don’t like to make a plan for your money on paper every month. And I can’t necessarily blame you.
It is hard, and it takes discipline. It also is IMPORTANT. So when you have to choose between the latest episode of your favorite TV show or doing your monthly budget after a long day of work, the budget is apt to lose every now and then.
That being said, I bet you’d appreciate it if I could give you an easier method to do your budget than pencil and paper. That’s what today’s post is all about, thanks to a question by a reader. Let’s learn to simplify the dreaded budget!
If you’ve read my book or attended any of my workshops, you know I generally teach folks to do a budget on a calendar. It is very visual and very effective. But it is also a lot slower than other methods. For those really struggling to make ends meet and/or to behave with their money, I believe this is needed. But eventually I hope we all graduate to a better method that allows us to put our funds into categories and allocate as appropriate. This is the assumed method with this template.
If you’re a nerd like me, you’re always looking for ways to use Excel. It is something about the view of those lovely cells on the rich, white background that makes you want to enter data and calculate important variables (by formula, of course), such as 2 + 2 or 1,739,384 * 2,324,525,757 just to see what the answer is. What? Just me? I’m the only one who does that? Oh.
If that whole last paragraph made no sense to you because you don’t know what Excel is, stop reading now and just use paper – it will be easier. For everyone else who knows what Excel is and have it installed on your computer (or are willing to download Open Office or use Google docs (part of Google Drive now), a couple of good (and free) alternatives), this post is for you.
First, download the Excel budget template here. This is to give you an idea of what you can do with Excel for a simple family budget. This will NOT fit your scenario 100%. Budgeting is designed to be flexible, so please know this is just a template to guide you in doing your own budget in Excel. I’ll walk you through our process so you can see how we do our budget each month based on our steady income (I’m salaried). If you’re on an irregular income, you should read this post before you go further.
Notice there are several tabs along the bottom of the spreadsheet: one for each month, one for instructions and one for categories. Read the instructions, then fill out the categories tab according to those instructions. Most importantly, only enter data in the green cells!!!
Next, go to the tab for the month for which you’re ready to prepare the budget. Since it is currently toward the end of November, that means you’d be looking at the December tab. Remember, spend the money on paper (or in Excel) before you get it in hand. You’ll always make better decisions that way. You’ll find all the data you entered from the Categories tab auto-populated into your December tab. Yay for Excel! On this tab, enter any extra income you plan on for that specific month that you didn’t enter on the Categories tab, then enter the amounts of your various expenses. If you have other one-off expenses for the month, put those in the green cells provided for that purpose along with their amounts. Voila!
When it is all said and done, you should have a big fat 0.00 in the lower right of that month’s tab (highlighted in orange) and your budget is complete. Between savings and expenses, you “spent” every dollar of your income. That’s how a correct budget works.
If something goes wrong with your budget during the month, you can easily come back here and make adjustments. Your goal is to always end up with a 0.00 in the lower right while covering all your expenses with the income you’ve got to work with.
Well, that’s about it. For those of you who like Excel, I suspect you’ll love this form. For those of you who hate Excel, you will probably hate me now too. Oh well. That being said, I’m sure you’ll have some questions. That’s what the comments are all about. Will this make your budgeting easier?
Love this, you’re the best!
Wow this is amazing! Thanks for posting!
You’re welcome!
— Julie, HH Team
*Exactly* what I have been looking for- thank you so much!
Glad to help 🙂
— Julie, HH Team
I have been reading your blog for years and I really appreciate how you all are making finances accessible. As an avid excel junkie, I REALLY appreciate the budget template (yay cell references!) as I’ve been looking for ways to improve my current model. Thank you!
You’re welcome! I had nothing to do with it. LOL Barry is the numbers and spreadsheet man.
Hello!!
I am a teacher and trying to determine my monthly budget on 20 pay periods. I have determined my monthly income by using the following formula.
Net pay x 20 divided by 12
Next step….how do I determine how much should be saved every pay period to cover my summer months??
I am in student in “Budgeting for Dummies”. Thanks in advance for your help!
Hey there, I don’t know how many months you have off for summer, but if you have 20 pay periods over the course of 12 months, it sounds to me like you have two months off (2 pay periods per month x 10 months per year). I’m guessing, so I’ve emailed you to see if I can get some additional details and help you come to the right number.
Wow, just set up my budget using your Excel template…soooo easy. Have been wanting to tackle that for some time but hated the thought of paper and pencil. This is great. Thank you!
I’m SO glad!
Thank you so much for this! I downloaded it and filled out the Categories tab and a tentative January tab, ‘penciled in’, to give me an idea of how it will work and I plan to revisit it each month to keep on track. I absolutely love Excel. I had an old Excel budget template I tried to use but it was much more complicated and I had no instructions and ended up abandoning it because I couldn’t figure out a way to make it work in my daily life to get myself on track. I love that this one is so simple. I think I will really use this one! I must admit I struggled briefly with the ‘irregular expenses’ field on the Categories tab. If things are irregular, how can you predict how often then come in? I couldn’t figure out also why the calculation for how much $ to put aside ea mo. wasn’t correct. Then I realized I was fillin it out wrong and needed to think of it as ‘every x months’ because I was putting in how many months per year I was receiving it and that was wrong. So a bill that comes in once per year needs to have a 12 in that column for ‘once every 12 months’ instead of a 1 for ‘once per year’ if that makes sense!!! Anyway, thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
🙂 I’m glad you figured out the irregulars and how they work. Let me know if you have any other questions and ENJOY the template!
This is wonderful! Thank you for sharing with us.
I need ideas for daily tracking money spent. Any thought to share to help me and other with that?
Thank you.
We use our online bank and a Excel spreadsheet to help us do that. It’s kinda like an electronic checkbook register. 🙂
I just recently found your website and the budget spread sheet if you have it available still would you please send me the version with more lines. I work with excel and tried to add more lines and copy the formula but can’t get it to carry over to the monthly tabs.
Thank you so much
Hey Belinda, you can download the file at: http://www.stacymakescents.com/freecontent/budget template-more-lines.xls
Enjoy!
THANKS!!!!! You’re my new hero! 🙂
Hi there, our family is new to your blog and learning so much! I clicked over from a link through Heavenly Homemakers (also new to us) I downloaded the automated budget templet but don’t have enough line entry space. EEEKS! What does that say about us! I need about 10 more lines for irregular expences and about 20 more for monthly expenses. Actually, most of these lines are for things that are not one large expense but rather lots of little things that just add up and sneek up on me. This templet will allow me to get it all together – ha literally. Can I add these lines? I would really appreciate the help. Thanks, Sheila.
Just sent you an email with some more lines for one I did a while back. You can tweak more if you like, but that should help!
Hi there,
I am just reading this and am wondering if you can offer suggestions for budgeting when we don’t know what we’ll be making from month to month. We’ve always had a steady income, but now we’re not going to know what our income will be each month, so I’m struggling to know how to best budget our money.
We also eat a whole foods, organic diet, so while that is a big expense for us, we are not paying for insurance anymore.
Thanks for any advice/input you can offer! 🙂 God’s blessings, Cheyenne
Hey Cheyenne,
I actually wrote a post about this very topic (http://www.stacymakescents.com/budgeting-when-your-income-is-inconsistent). I hope it will get you started. Let me know if you have any questions I can help answer thereafter.
Thank you Barry! That did help quite a bit…brought clarity to my thinking!
Thanks again! 🙂
Hi. I just found this! Awesome! Thank you for doing this. I have downloaded the spreadsheet, but the only thing I am seeing are the directions. I can’t find the actual spreadsheet. What am I missing? Thank you again.
Merry Christmas!!
The spreadsheet has tabs at the bottom. That’s where you find the rest of what you’re looking for.
Thanks Barry, this will be really useful.
I worked 20 years in banking and used to be really tight about budgeting. We paid our house off and the cars. years ago
With the pressure off we relaxed a little. I got slack about tracking everything.
Now we’re are facing that empty nest, and doing retirement planning.
We’re both 50 and want to make sure we are on track for a simple but unstressed financial future.
It sounds like you’re all set and ready to go! 🙂
oh my goodness Barry, may you receive rewards in Heaven for sharing this!!! This is answered prayer for me!!!! Thank you!!!! I’m familiar with excel, but not enough to add to what you created without some help. For example, I need an extra 7 rows under irregular bills. Is it more or less simple enough for you to explain how I can make that edit? I can’t just copy and paste everything below it and move it 7 rows down can I? I would think that would affect the other tabs but I’m not sure since I don’t know exactly how you have it configured. Thanks again SO much for sharing this!!!!!
I went in and added 7 extra lines for irregulars for you and sent you that spreadsheet via email. If it doesn’t show up in a few minutes, check your spam/junk folder. Enjoy!
#1 I love this website! I have learned so much over this past year and I am so very, very thankful to both of you! I am so glad you posted this blog 🙂 I have been wanting to do an online spreadsheet but wasn’t sure where to even start, so thank you for posting this! God Bless!!!
🙂 You’re most welcome! We hope it’s a blessing to you and your finances.
One more issue, it is asking for a user name and password if I try to save this file to my desktop. Thanks so much for your help!
The file isn’t protected, so I think that is something to do with your computer, not the website or our file. Don’t think I can help you with that one. 🙁
I am pretty experienced in Excel and I am always looking for new ways to stay on a set budget. I am not as familiar with Google Docs and don’t know how to save this in Google docs. When I download it, it downloads to Excel directly and I don’t know how to get it into Google Docs. Can you help me with that?
If you have a Google account, you can go to drive.google.com and log in. Once in there, click the button next to CREATE (left side) and upload the Excel sheet. That will drop it into Google Docs and you can use/manage it from there.
I can’t see the work sheet but would like to figure it out! My computer with excel isn’t hooked to the internet, well nothing here is but my phone. Cam you help me figure this out another way? Thru email maybe? Thanks, i’d appreciate it!!
I’m emailing it to you now. You can sync the phone with your computer and grab it that way.
Okay…so I downloaded Open Office and then your template but it is only opening up in a “read only” format. I do not like the templates that Open Office has available. Do you know what I need to do to get your template working for me?
Nevermind, I figured it out. I knew it was one of those slow down and focus on what your doing things! LOL 🙂 Thanks so much for the template I really like yours and think it will definitely help my family out.
GREAT! Glad you figured it out. 🙂
Thanks so much for posting this sheet! Its a great help trying to establish a budget and making sure i save up for the irregular payments.
🙂 You’re most welcome!
How would you add more lines to the bills area? I’m completely lost in excel but willing to learn. Thanks
Excel is pretty “smart” to figure out what you’re trying to do, so you can add lines without messing up formulas on the categories tab, but you’ll run into trouble on the monthly tabs because it doesn’t recognize what you’re doing. You would have to modify the lines on the monthly tabs lines to make this work. If you were comfortable with Excel I could explain, but since you say you’re “lost” I suspect it would only frustrate you. How many extra lines do you need?
I would need an extra 5 in the irregular bills and an extra 8 in the monthly bills. Thanks, Stacy!!
Just sent you an updated spreadsheet with extra lines. The formatting isn’t as pretty because I had to shrink everything to make it all fit, but the content is there and if you use it on screen you’ll never notice a difference.
I started doing a budget about 6 months ago after listening to Dave Ramsey. The first four months was tough but the last two it finally started to click. It really makes a difference.
Yes it does. A HUGE difference!
Another Excel nerd here. I like your spreadsheet – the colour coding makes it nice and easy for non-nerds to use. I do the same when I design spreadsheets for others. I’ll probably have to expand on it a bit as we have a LOT of bills (far too many really).
I don’t like Excel….but I do LOVE color coding. 🙂
This is awesome! Thanks so much! I am entering our data now! Maybe this will keep us on track!
You’ll do great! If you need any help just let us know.
Hi Stacy! I understand your Excel nerd-ism. Its really bad when family you haven’t seen or talked to in years tell you on Thanksgiving (over the phone) “Happy Thanksgiving…Oh by the way, I need some help with Excel.” LOL!! The workbook is B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L…I can’t wait to use it. Thanks so much!
That’s a hoot! Barry uses Excel for all kinds of stuff – it is his go-to program for all things math.
🙂 I knew you’d like it Nikki. He actually came home last night – he felt bad about leaving me here sick with a sick toddler and baby. 🙂 He’s a good man – and he helped me clean the bathroom today.
No – he was only out a few hours…..I think he felt bad because we were home sick. 🙁
Barry, I’ve been reading Humorous Homemaking for quite some time now. I enjoy both
Stacy’s and your posts. My question: Do I really need separate categories in my budget for food, entertainment, and gas? I’ve
been working with these three in one lump category. We have X amt. for all three every two weeks. This method seems
to work well for us. Am I missing something?
Hey Amy. Your method works, but I would definitely encourage individual categories for food, entertainment and gas. Why? Because within reason (you can take it too far) the more categories the more accurate your budget will be. Specifically, you’ll have less “sloppiness” because each category requires your scrutiny. Taking your logic of fewer categories too far equals no categories at all and thus no budget. Taking my logic of more categories too far equals WAY TOO MANY categories and requires an accountant to keep up with it. Aim for somewhere in the middle. The “categorized budget” example I provide in the appendix of the budgeting booklet you can get by signing up for Stacy’s daily emails gives what I believe to be a pretty complete list of categories for the average family and would give you a good start.
I would love to use this spreadsheet, but our income is based on bi-weekly pay periods. How can I account for this with excel, when the budget is done monthly?
Budgets are almost always done on a monthly basis because that’s how often bills usually come due. Being paid on a bi-weekly or twice-monthly pay schedule shouldn’t alter your approach to how you handle this spreadsheet; I would treat it as though you’re paid twice monthly. I know that two months out of the year this isn’t true, but if you live as though you don’t receive those checks you’ll be better off on the other 10 months of the year. When those two extra checks come in a couple of times a year, you can treat each as extra income on that month’s worksheet (line 6 or 7). Then recognize that you’ll just need to “spend” (save, pay extra on debt, etc.) that money those two months. Hope that helps. Let me know if you need more clarification.
I do love a fellow Excel nerd… I’m on my phone and can’t see your spreadsheet, but can’t wait to compare it to mine and see where I can make some improvements!
Ahhh…Dani…a woman after my own heart. If you have any tips to improve my spreadsheet, let me know!
Excellent recommendations!! I have been using this method for about four years now and it works. You are so terrific with finances. Thank you!
I’m so lucky to have married a math man! 🙂