How I Create My Monthly Budget

Creating a monthly budget can be overwhelming at first. Money is stressful to a lot of people, but as Dave Ramsey says, a budget allows you to tell your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. After much trial and error, I have found what works for me and I'm going to be sharing it today in hopes that someone finds it useful!

I keep my budget in a spreadsheet in the Google Drive of my personal Gmail account. (If you don't know how to get there and create one, let me know in the comments and I'm happy to explain.) I like it because it always saves itself, I can't lose it, it allows me to create formulas so that the document does the math for me and I can update it anytime as needed as well as look back on previous months. I just create a new tab for each month using the blank template I created. Your template may need to look very different from mine depending on what information is relevant to you, how many bank accounts you have that are relevant to your budget, what bills you have, what type of career you have, etc. For example, I am a business owner which means that my income is not taxed when clients pay me so I need to set aside a percentage for taxes in a separate savings account every month. This is included in my budget, but the account balance is not reflected in my monthly budget because I'll never take money from that account (except to pay my taxes), I will only add to it each month. You may also choose to keep yours in a Microsoft excel document on your desktop or on paper.

So let's jump into what my monthly budget template looks like.

The first section at the top of my monthly budget template is my income and account balances. At the beginning of the month I list my checking account balance, savings account balance(s), and any additional expected income. I know that this is the amount of money I have to work with for the month. Of course, I try to NEVER pull from savings, but I list it just in case an emergency expense comes up that I need to budget for. ALL expenses go in the budget.

The next section is my recurring expenses such as rent, utilities, insurance, subscriptions, groceries, gas, spending, etc. For each expense, I list the planned amount, actual amount, due date and date paid. I list the actual amount because I estimate a budgeted amount for my utilities such as electricity each month but it varies month to month. I also color code all of the expenses that are auto-drafted from my account. For the expenses that are budgeted but aren't necessarily a "bill" such as spending, groceries and gas, I keep track of how much I've spent for the month in a separate tab. For example, let's say my spending allowance was $200. I'd list $200 at the top and then list every purchase below that with the date and amount then calculate the total I have left for the month. You may not need to do this, but personally I need to be able to see how much I've spent in each category to keep myself on track and not overspend.

The third section is for nonrecurring expenses that are specific to that month. For example, this month I have to board my dog, which is a one time expense that only needs to be on my December budget. I include the planned amount, actual amount, due date and date paid for these expenses as well.

The fourth section is debt. I include the planned amount, actual amount, due date and date paid for each debt. I also make note of the new balance next to each line after they have been paid for the month. Hopefully this section won't need to exist on my budget soon! Fingers crossed.

The next section is savings. In this section I include the amount I plan to save in each account and the actual amount saved. I also make note of my new savings balance after the transfer has been made next to each line. For me this includes my emergency fund, regular savings, home down payment savings, and the savings account I keep my tax money in as previously mentioned.

Lastly, everything is totaled at the bottom of my budget so I can see the total amount I planned to pay out and the actual amount I paid.

That's pretty much it for my monthly budget. I update, edit and change my budget as needed each month. For example, if I add a new subscription or have a nonrecurring expense to add, I'll just update it for the month. I hope you guys found this helpful whether you plan to use my method or template or just found inspiration from it!

I'm including a screenshot of my monthly budget template, but if you'd like me to email you the actual editable template, just let me know!