Hey hi hello, let’s dive right in, shall we? We shall. Introducing the Budget Template...
Wait, it actually shouldn’t be called a “Budget Template,” but rather a “Bookkeeping Template” - as it’s simply an organization tool for your money, and to understand what the heck is going on...
How much do you earn?
What do you spend it on?
How much do you save/go into debt?
You can download the spreadsheet here:
2023 Budget Template (download the file from Google Drive]
2023 Google Sheets Budget Template (”copy as” and create a new one)
Back in 2016 I wrote my first “budget” blog post (here), and since then the spreadsheet has been downloaded over 5,000 times (woo!), and it’s consistently one of the most asked for posts. *grins*
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again that once upon a time I stressed my mom out a lot with my spending habits, and rightfully so! I hated money and bills and had debt up to my hoo-ha, so yea, I promise this post is to hopefully encourage those who also aint-got-time-for-money to actually sit down, look at your money, face reality, and track it because oh-so-very-sadly money is not magic, and it won’t just magically work itself out.
Here are some (dare I say it?) testimonials from my Instagram account. I love hearing how the spreadsheet has helped others too, and I encourage you to try it out and start the next decade our right!
Over the past ten years I’ve probably created ten different budget templates in Excel. And none of them really worked for me before this one.
I would set budget goals way too extreme, quickly break them, and then give up (similar to weight loss, eh?). Then one fine day in the middle of the night I sat down to create yet another budget, and I had the revolutionary thought that I should probably figure out where my money goes before I create a set percentage budget for myself, and that’s exactly what I did.
The results? Amazing. This spreadsheet has allowed me to travel as much as I do, fight for more money at work (as I’m motivated to save more), and has removed that awful guilt feeling I used to have about not having my sh*t together when it came to money.
I now find money interesting, and even look forward to keeping track of it. I’ve also drastically stopped spending as much as I used to because I clearly see how $12 here and $17 there add up fast. I now know exactly what I spend on rental cars each year, or on groceries each month, or how much my lunches cost.
My personal tips for getting a handle on your money:
Understand your spending habits today. As I noted above it’s incredibly hard to suddenly say I’m only going to spend 20% of my income on food, when I have no idea how much I spend on food today. Understand your money first.
Buy everything, and I mean EVERYTHING on debit or Visa cards. Ban cash from your life. Really, there’s pretty much no need for cash anymore. From the subway to meals out, swipe and tap away. Budgeting is significantly easier if everything is tracked online for you. If you do use cash, keep receipts until you’ve logged it in your budget, but for reals, don’t use cash, It’s so easy to lose those receipts, and never add them back into the spreadsheet, and not mention cash slips through your finger tips with nothing real to show for it. (As a fun fact: In 2018 I withdrew NO cash. In 2019 so far it’s $300, so it can be done).
Take a few hours and figure it out. Commit the time to it. The initial setup of a budget is the hardest. Once it’s set up it’s incredibly easy and quick to pop in and update it.
There are many fantastic tools out there like Mint.com, but I find they’re almost too automatic. Everything is done for me, so I don’t need to go in and track and look and see it, which means I ignore it. And because it’s automatic, I don’t learn and understand it. Therefore, start with a manual process to really understand your money.
Keep your budget simple. Screw what you learned in school - fixed expenses, variable expenses, balance sheets, assets, etc. Follow a budget that you understand. Something clean and simple. If you download mine, you’ll see it’s simple: Money-In (my income) minus Money-Out (everything I spend money on = savings/debt. No fancy words.
Other people’s Excel Templates are always a little challenging. So I’ve tried my best to make the majority of the template automatic. I’ve also added simple instructions. You will need a basic understanding of Excel to use it.
First, you need to know there are three tabs in my Budget:
2021 Budget (this is the heart of the whole thing)
2021 Summary (this is automatic)
Download the spreadsheet here
“Make a Copy” of the Google Sheets version
Customize the spreadsheet to reflect your personal life.
Review all the blue squares (in column C) and edit them to reflect you. For example, within the Transportation category, if you have a car, you could add “Gas,” “Insurance” “Parking,” and/or “Maintenance” and remove “Uber” and “Rentals.”
Or you can even add an entire new sections like “Kids” and then have “clothes,” “diapers” or whatever the categories are within that that you want to track.
Important Note: if you do add new rows, add them in the middle of the category (that way the totals will pick them up). And if you add an entire new section, remember to insert the new row on Tab 2 too. To check whether a total is adding the right cels, double click on the red number; the cells it’s adding up will be shown.
STEP THREE: Enter your data
Enter your data into the white and grey sections. It’s a little odd writing this before the New Year, as obviously you won’t have data for January 2020 yet, but once you do, this is what you do (so just pretend a week or two has passed).
For January, enter your income into cells F7 and/or F10 (I set it up by paycheque, but you could customize it to your incoming income).
I created an example column (column D in green) to help you see what it looks like. For example in the month of January each pay cheque is $2,000. The person’s rent is $1,200. And they spend $60 on the Internet, $78 on Cable, and $48 on utilities etc.
NOTE: All the totals are automatic. You do not need to touch the red sub-totals, but it’s worth double-clicking on them to see they’re adding up the right columns.
The Majority of expenses:
For everyday expenses (not once-a-month-ones) I do a quick Excel equation in the appropriate square. For example, let’s look at dinners out in the example column:
You can see when I click on the cell below with “$137″ in it, the equation is appears at the top and shows, “ =8.99+9.2+6+18+64.83+13.88+17″. That’s right, I’m manually adding these in every few days from my Visa and Chequing account statements.
And yup, I am looking at my Visa or Debit statement to find those numbers.
To look at another example, let’s look at my bank statement statement:
I would add the following expenses into my spreadsheet like this:
Jcrew = Clothing December column “+36.54″
Dropbox = Other (in entertainment) “+119.88″
FrameItEasy = House Decore “+131.77″
UPS = postage for Christmas cards therefore Gifts “+28.50″
Netflix = Entertainment Netflix “+10.62″
Trader Joes = Groceries “+44.55″
I realize this seems challenging, but if you do it every few days it’s so EASY and QUICK and allows you to A) check that your statements are right, and forces you to re-think things when you buy them; do you really want to add “+80″ for a new sweater to clothing?
Only the initial start up is a little time consuming, but I promise if you do this every few days (or start on Jan 1st!), it’s very easy.
NOTE: I leave a quick note to myself the last data/item/amount I added in. So next time I resume from the right spot.
This is why it’s so important to not use cash. Cash is evil and disappears on you, so swipe and tap and get a record of everything.
Once you fill in all your numbers, you’ll be able to see at the bottom whether you saved any money that month. The cell will turn green if you saved, or red if you did not.
Once you start to add #s in January’s column, if you click on the next tabs you’ll see your Summary starting to form, which shows you the percentage within each category. Including savings.
Pie charts or bar graphs will even start to form!
This is the budget I created and use all the time. I like it a lot and have managed to use it consistently for nearly five years!! Here’s a snapshot my 2020 year all filled out:
I hope this is helpful to someone out there! I’d love any feedback you have (or broken formulas you find.)
Please email me (my comments are disabled) if you have any questions ([email protected] or find any errors in the spreadsheet) - I’ll be happy to help where I can!
Happy money tracking and good luck in 2021!!
