For example, I like to use cell comments to explain certain budgeted items in more detail (such as the fact that in May, there is Mother's Day and a couple of birthdays to remember).Ĭreating a simple personal budget (even if it is only on paper) is one of the first steps to gaining control of your spending habits. The reason I use Excel when working with my home and business budgets is that it gives me complete flexibility to keep track of the information the way I want to. If you don't own Excel, then Google Sheets and OpenOffice are free options to consider. Microsoft Excel isn't free, but if you already own Excel, then you can create a budget without purchasing other budgeting software. After making a change, you should check the formulas to make sure they are still correct.First reason: it's free. If your Net is negative, that means you have overspent your monthly budget.Īdding or Removing categories: You need to be careful when adding or removing categories, to avoid messing up the formulas used for calculating the totals.

The Monthly Budget Summary table in the upper right of the worksheet totals up all your income and expenses and calculates your Net as Income minus Expenses. So, if you spend more than you budgeted for, the value in the Difference column will be red - to help it stand out as a warning. The spreadsheet uses the accounting format where negative numbers are in parenthesis like (115.00), and conditional formatting is used to make the negative numbers red - red means bad in this case. The calculations in the 'Difference' column are set up so that negative numbers are bad. Using the Personal Monthly Budget Template See our articles Make a Budget and 5 Basic Budgeting Tips if you are just getting started or new to budgeting. At the end of the month, you record in the 'Actual' column how much you really spent during the month.įor a more detailed set of budget categories, see the Household Budget worksheet. This represents your goal - you're trying to keep from spending more than this amount.

You record your desired budget for each category in the 'Budget' column. The purpose of this type of budget worksheet is to compare your monthly budget with your actual income and expenses. Some numbers are included in the Home Expenses category as an example, but you'll want to replace those numbers with your own. To use this template, just fill in numbers that are highlighted with a light-blue background (the Budget and Actual columns).

Custom home budget spreadsheet