A monthly budget is an essential tool for personal financial success. Before one can know where to invest his money, he has to have a clear picture of where it’s coming from and where it needs to go. By using a spreadsheet to compose your monthly budget, you can make quick modifications at any time and stay confident that all of your totals are mathematically correct and absolutely up-to-date.
Click here to download a sample budget spreadsheet for Microsoft Excel.
Income & Expense Columns
Our budget has three sets of columns that list income and expenses: Income, Fixed Expenses and Variable Expenses.
- Income: This column lists each different source of monthly income that you have.
- Fixed Expenses: Fixed expenses typically do not change from month to month. This column will hold the amounts that you devote to things like rent, insurance and loan payments.
- Variable Expenses: Variable expenses are bills that may fluctuate slightly each month. This column contains estimates of ballpark amounts that you devote to certain bills each month. Fixed expenses are things like food and entertainment. You shouldn’t kill yourself updating this column each month - just fill in a good average amount for each expense and be done with it.
Totals
We have a final set of columns to list all of our budget’s totals. First, get together sums of all the previous columns:
- Income: A sum of all entries in your list of income.
- Fixed Exp.: A sum of how much your fixed expenses amount to.
- Variable Exp.: A sum of how much your variable expenses amount to.
Next and last, you’ll want to get a total sum of all your monthly expenses and use that to figure out how much of your net is available after all your bills are taken care of.
- Total Expenses: A sum of the two total expense columns mentioned previously: fixed expenses + variable expenses.
- Disposable Income: The amount of money left over after all of your bills are taken care of: Total Income - Total Expenses.
And that’s it. Keeping a monthly budget with a spreadsheet is dead simple. The key to the whole procedure is to use formulas to calculate all of your totals so that each total is automatically updated when you add new income and/or expenses to your budget.
Sources
- Unknown Author. “Monthly Budget Spreadsheet Template”. Source unknown.
The spreadsheet linked in this article is a modified version of an excel file that was downloaded from the web some time ago, whose source could not be found as of this writing.
18 responses
May 24th, 2006
Lifehacker says:
Download of the Day: Simple budget spreadsheet…
A few days ago we featured the Pear budget system, a well-developed (but a bit complex) spreadsheet that tracks your income and expenses throughout the year. Today computer help site Of Zen and Computing offers another spreadsheet budget template -……
May 24th, 2006
Get Rich Slowly » Handy Personal Finance Spreadsheets says:
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May 24th, 2006
Dejected Resistance » Blog Archive » links for 2006-05-26 says:
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May 24th, 2006
links for 2006-05-26 | Musings by Steve Miller says:
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May 24th, 2006
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May 24th, 2006
links for 2006-05-25 - Ian’s Messy Desk says:
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May 24th, 2006
Skirting the Periphery… » Attribution of a File Shared on the ‘Net says:
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May 24th, 2006
जुगाड़ी लिंक|Cool Links » Daily Links says:
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May 24th, 2006
Use a spreadsheet to keep monthly budget - AllanCaguiat.com says:
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May 24th, 2006
JohnBedard.com » Budgeting Spreadsheets says:
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May 24th, 2006
6 Great (and Free) Spreadsheets To Track Your Budget - Financial Hack says:
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May 24th, 2006
12 Free Personal Finance Applications says:
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May 24th, 2006
A Minty Way to Keep Track of Your Daily Spending » Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software says:
[…] Minty softwares - Use the many available free spreadsheets online or create your own (we recommend a very simple spreadsheet from Of Zen and Computing). Tools such as Microsoft Money and Intuit Quicken can also be handy to track your daily spendings (although in our opinion there are simpler, cheaper softwares out there). […]
May 24th, 2006
6 Great Free Alternatives to Quicken & MS Money | zen habits says:
[…] Excel or Google Spreadsheets. Perhaps the simplest tool of all. Create your own (I did) or find an excellent one already created: Pear Budget, Of Zen and Computing’s simple spreadsheet, Get Rich Slowly’s spreadsheet. The appeal of this is that it’s extremely flexible, it’s simple, it’s fast and easy, it’s free and, if you keep it really simple, you can put it online with Google Spreadsheets. […]
May 24th, 2006
Massive Personal Finance Resource List | The Frugal Law Student says:
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May 24th, 2006
My Get Things Done List » Blog Archive » 6 Great Free Alternatives to Quicken & MS Money [zen habits] says:
[…] tool of all. Create your own (I did) or find an excellent one already created: Pear Budget, Of Zen and Computing’s simple spreadsheet, Get Rich Slowly’s spreadsheet. The appeal of this is that it’s extremely flexible, […]
May 24th, 2006
More Free Budget Spreadsheets by The Frugal Beagle says:
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May 24th, 2006
The big bad B word… Don’t worry, it’s six letters. « Common Cents For Everyone says:
[…] of all expenses and income. Hopefully, the former is smaller than the latter. I used an amazingly simple Excel spreadsheet from the “Of Zen and Computing” blog when I did this, however it could easily be replicated in […]