The ONLY Budget Spreadsheet You Need! (works in Google, Excel, & Numbers!)

Most people are tracking their money all wrong, but not you. Want to take your budget behavior to the next level? In this tutorial, I'm walking you through how to set up your monthly budget with my ultimate spreadsheet, with more formulas and more data already baked in that works with Google Sheets, Excel, and Numbers. Plus, I'm giving you seven bonus sheets to track your debt and savings, but more on that in just a bit. To access the spreadsheet, head to the link in the description box below. The first thing that you'll want to do in order to set up your monthly budget is set up your planned income, debt, and expenses. If you go over to the summary table, what you want to do is you want to add in any planned income that you know or that you think you'll know that you'll bring in for the month. For you, it could look like $5,000. If you get paid every other week, you're a W-2 earner, maybe your significant other has income and they contribute to your financial picture. You'll also want to include that by adding their planned monthly take-home. This is the take-home pay after taxes are taken out, after deductions are taken out. This is what actually hits your bank account. And then list any planned extra income. If you're a side hustler or a freelancer and you know that you've got a client on retainer, you can add that there. Next, head over to the debt table. You'll want to list any debts that you have with outstanding balances, such as federal student loans, a car loan. Maybe you have a couple credit card debts. So if you had discover credit card, a chase credit card, and then what you want to do is go into each of those accounts, log in and see what the minimum monthly payment is. So for your student loans, it could be $234, the car loan, 357. Maybe you owe a minimum monthly payment of $45 on discover and $97 on chase. You'll also want to hop over to the interest rate for each. So if it's 5%, 7%, maybe it's 24.99% for discover, not, not unheard of 27.99% for chase. And then you'll want to list out any outstanding balances on each of those loans. All right. Once you have your debt table filled in, you're actually going to ignore this actual monthly payment for now, because we're still planning out what we want to do with our total income and what we have going on. So we actually have $8,000 in planned income. So next we're going to go into our fixed category fixed are any items in your budget that are known expenses that, you know, you have to pay every single month. Typically this is covering your basic needs. So rent or a mortgage payment, your utilities, any transportation costs. I also include groceries or any insurance premiums inside of the fixed budget. So let's say you have a rent of $1,200. Cell phone is 45 internet, 70 electricity, one 25 water, 55 gas for your cars, 150. And you keep filling in as much information as you can. Hopefully you know this information. And if you don't, you're going to go into each of those bill servicers and add it up for groceries. You're going to plan that amount and say, all right, I think I'm going to spend $500, but we're going to find out what actually happens in just a bit household. We're going to add 50 and health, which includes any supplements, vitamins, or prescriptions you'll add right there. Then we're going to go into the next sub category. This is fun. So this is where all of your discretionary spending lives. So you want to make sure that you have at least some fun in your life. This is not a beans and rice budget. Rather, this is a type of budget we're setting up so that you know, you're spending on fun stuff, but you're also hitting your goals restaurants. We can put $200 here. I'm going to skip shopping because I want to show how that's going to work in just a second, but I've got $500 going towards shopping a hundred bucks towards clothes, 50 towards haircut. Let's say another 50 towards gifts. Fun money is anything that would include concert tickets, entertainment. Maybe you have a hobby or activity that you like to do each month. So we'll put $50 there for subscriptions. You are actually going to hop over to your subscription tracker and here you are going to list every monthly subscription that you might have. I'm going to name some of the big ones here. Netflix, Amazon prime, Spotify. You're also going to list the date of when those get pulled out. So maybe it's on the 7th, maybe this is on the 15th and the 29th of each month. You're going to add that monthly subscription amount under the budget column. So maybe this is $7.99. Maybe Amazon prime is $14.99 and Spotify is $12.99. When you actually go to pay those bills, you're going to write in that total amount under the amount column. So $14.99 and you're going to write them as they occur. All right, let's check out what happened in the subscriptions row. So you got a total of almost $36 per month in subscriptions. So they're all lumped together. Also know any of the gray cells that you see here that are grayed out has a formula already baked in it. So please do not mess with the formulas and don't mess with the gray cells. If you don't want to mess with the formulas, the next subcategory is fudge. So fudge is not chocolate. This is a reference to Ralphie from a Christmas story when he's trying to help his dad change tire and the nuts and bolts go everywhere. And he yells, Oh fudge. This is for all those moments where you're like fudge. I forgot mom's birthday is coming up. I need to get her a gift or I forgot to pick up that prescription and I didn't account for it. This is your cushion. If you were to go over on another category, you can move money from your miscellaneous line items. So I typically include a hundred bucks. You can do more or less. The last subcategory is future. Every good budget has a savings component to it. Whether you're saving for an emergency fund, you're saving up for your vacation or maybe a new car, you want to bake that into a monthly savings contribution that is, that is coming out of your monthly budget. So maybe you're working on your emergency fund. So we're going to put $300 towards that. Maybe you want to do a hundred dollars towards vacation. Maybe you're not focused on a new car fund, but you'll just save a little bit there. Any outside investing such as a brokerage account or a Roth IRA that would use after tax dollars would go inside of the outside investing category. And then if you want to save for a college 529 plan for your child, this is where it goes. All right. So let's see how this plan budget is shaping up. So we've got our $8,000 take-home planned minus the $4,000 in expenses minus the $450 in savings has us a leftover budget of $3,300. You want to make sure that every single dollar is allocated towards your budget. This is called zero-based budgeting. Meaning as you get closer to zero, all of your dollars have been accounted for. If you do not do this, money somehow disappears, gets lost or gets spent. And you don't actually use that money to achieve your financial goals or spend intentionally. So let's say you really want to go hard on a down payment fund. So you can add that directly into your future goal. You can add $2,500 here. And then we've got enough for a college 529 plan. So we still have $650 ish dollars left over. Looks like we can increase some of our fund money spending if we want to. So let's go like this. And let's say we need to boost our health fund. And now we're seeing how all of this is taking shape, right? Okay. So we're getting closer to zero, which is great. Even a net of a hundred bucks means you still have some wiggle room to make things happen. So now you've got everything filled out, fixed, fun, fudge, and future, which is what I call the four F's budget method. You do not have to get this granular. You could stick to the four subcategories and be totally fine, but that's the beauty of the four F's budget is you can keep it high level, or you can keep it really specific. Now that you have everything mapped out, we're going to start recording your actual transactions as they happen throughout the month. But first we're going to start recording what you actually are bringing home with your paycheck. So back in the summary table, you're going to record your actual pay stub amount. So maybe it was 2,500. And how you're going to do that is you're going to click inside the cell and click equals. Then you're going to hit 2,500 plus the next paycheck amount, which totals your $5,000. Same thing with your spouse's income. So $1,500 and $1,500 would go in their line item. And then any extra income, maybe you sold something on Facebook marketplace, and then that gets added as well. Now let's add in your actual expenses and your debt payments inside of the actually going to scroll to the bottom. So instead of adding directly to this actual column here in the gray cells, you're going to scroll to the bottom, to the daily expense tracker. This is your home base during the month. What you're going to do is you're going to add the date that it happened of that specific transaction. You're going to write the description by pulling up your credit card statement or your bank account statement, wherever you're doing the bulk of your transactions. And you're going to start writing in each of those transactions. Maybe you went to Chick-fil-A, maybe on the fifth, you went shopping. You're going to add in the description. You're going to go to the column category, click the dropdown, and then you're going to find where that particular transaction fits within that category. So Chick-fil-A for me is restaurants. You could have a category for fast food, but I like to lump everything into restaurants. Maybe it's $12. H&M would be close. And we'll say that was $35. As you are filling in these numbers, you're going to see numbers and transactions start to auto-populate up here at the top. We have a planned restaurant budget of $400 and we've spent $12 so far. So we have a difference of $388 left over to spend. So this is shown in the difference column here. When you go to make an extra debt payment, or you're making the minimums, you are going to go ahead and add the date. You're going to say what it was, discover extra payment, and maybe you put $100. So we're going to record the $100 in the amount. The category was discover credit card. And then you'll see right up here at the top, the actual monthly payment was $100, even though the minimum monthly payment was only 45. Now, if you're paying off your credit card in full every single month, you do not need to record that in the daily expense tracker because all of those individual transactions that you are recording inside of your budget are already accounted for. You don't want to double count those amounts. So maybe you have your rent that you paid $1,200. Maybe that came out late on the 7th and you're going to continue to list that. And then that has been populated in the actual column. And you can see there's no more money left over for that particular expense. All right. So everything gets recorded in the daily expense tracker, except for subscriptions, because we've lumped them together and we're using the subscription tracker table. You'll really want to level up your budget with sinking funds. So sinking funds are ongoing monthly savings that you might make to save up for irregular purchases, annual subscriptions, or a particular category in which you really want to build up to a particular goal. So this works really well for those annual expenses, such as a annual subscription due, or maybe you pay your car insurance every six months in order to take advantage of a discount instead of monthly. You can also use this for a fund money expenses such as clothes. So you can set aside $50 per month and a sinking fund, let that build up over time. And then if you're saving for a particular expense, so you want to buy a really nice coat and it costs a couple hundred bucks, you already have the money set aside and ready to go. All you're going to do to set up a sinking fund is you're going to record the monthly savings amount that you want to take out of your budget for that sinking fund. In this example, I'm using shopping, so I've got $500 going towards shopping. Here's where I will let you deviate from the don't mess with the gray sales box. You're actually going to mess with the template for the sinking funds. So in this, in the restaurants, you can see up at the top, I do have a fancy formula here. I'm giving you permission to change that for a sinking fund by just recording in the actual column, $500. So this signals that you're saving $500 regardless of your, if you're actually spending that amount of money in the month or not. Then when you go to actually spend money in that particular category, that's actually going to get recorded over here in the spent from sinking funds column. So you may have saved $500, but you spent $300, which nets you a total of $300 in the month. This is a $300 amount that you can roll over into the next month. So all you're going to do is you are going to record any time you are spending on shopping. So maybe this was a Nordstrom, a Nordstrom expense here, and that money is going to be denoted in that column. This takes your budgeting skills to the next level and makes managing money so much easier when you have sinking funds in place. Okay. So you're going to have sinking funds in place for shopping. Maybe you want one for car insurance. So here's another one where I would just write 125 in the actual column. And then you'll see the sinking fund total is $125. Then you would duplicate the spreadsheet and then add that $125 plus $125 from the next month, and it'll snowball. It's a fantastic thing. Once you have your sinking funds in place, you'll want to take note of the job deductions table. I've included a table for you to record any of your pre-tax deductions and contributions because a lot of people don't understand exactly how much of their paycheck is going towards various things like a flex savings accounts, insurance premiums, or how much they're contributing towards retirement. This is a way for you to track these contributions so that you can make any changes to your benefits plan if needed. You can also record any investment amounts and accounts and see that progression month to month. You're going to see this review chart down at the bottom with a summary of your income and expenses and that broken down into a pie chart for even more visuals. Up at the top, we've also included a cell here to tell you exactly how much money is left over in the month and a checklist in an area for events and notes. Maybe it's mom's birthday this month, or there's a holiday coming up that you want to account for that could change things in your budget. It's a really good mental note to tell you what things need to shift. So maybe at the beginning of the month, you know that the car insurance premium is due. And so you can write that there as a checklist to remind you that these are the different things that are happening in the month that would be different from the previous or the next month. This is also just a good spot to record your money wins. Now I mentioned that there are seven bonus sheets you get included with this template. You'll get the yearly glance tab that allows you to look at your spending and your income in a full 365 day picture. You'll also get the financial inventory sheet where you can record your monthly income and expenses and get an average of that. You can include all of your savings, including high yield savings, accounts, traditional savings, or checking accounts that you might have. You're going to list the bank name, current balance, the account type interest rate, and then you'll also be able to record all of your debts, including the different debt types, the current outstanding balance, minimum monthly payment due, and interest rate. You'll also want to record your investments, including any outside investing or employer investing accounts and any assets. So if you own a house, maybe jewelry, an RV, I don't know, something that has value, you're going to add in all of those things. And as you do, you're going to see a picture of your total assets, your total liabilities, which is going to get you your net worth. It's a very simple, quick and easy way just to see where your net worth is at. And you have all your financial accounts in one sheet. Next, you can track your debt, including student loans, credit cards, your car loan, and more by filling out each of these tables. You'll include your account name. So maybe it's Sally May. Maybe this is Advantage. You're going to include what the current balance is, what those minimum payments are, and the due dates along with your interest rate. As you're adding in each of those student loans, you'll scroll down and see that each debt has its own table. Inside of the table, you're going to record what interest accrued and how much interest you were charged. Maybe it's $56. And then how much you paid for that particular loan. So you can see exactly how much has been paid towards that particular debt. And you can do that for each of your student loans. Same thing with your credit card. You can add in any credit cards that have current outstanding balances. And then as you fill in the debt account summary table, each of these little tables down below is going to get its own chart for each of your debts. And then you're going to record what the interest was charged and then how much you actually paid for every single card that you have. Same with your car loan. And then for your savings tracker, this works in the same way, only it's going to track the amount saved and the amount of interest that you've earned. So maybe you have a high yield savings account with Ally. You've got $3,000, but you want 10. You have a monthly savings amount of 500 bucks right now, and it's currently earning 3.3%. You'll see exactly all of that information locked up into this really nice and neat table. So maybe you earned $34 in interest and you saved 500 bucks. And now you can see how those things are moving towards your financial goals. Everything is ready to go for you to create better budget behavior. Click the link to purchase once and use for life. And if you're not ready to purchase and you need something for free, then check out this tutorial on my ready to use budget toolkit.