personal budget excel spreadsheet template

You would monitor your credit card statement and allocate each transaction to specific expense categories. Is a credit card account a spending account? If you are paying the balance off each month, then yes. Note again that this is meant to show how much cushion your spending account has. If you included your Retirement Fund in the cash balance, then it wouldn't make sense to include 'Retirement Fund' as an Outflow. Why? Because we are treating transfers to these types of savings as Outflows from cash accounts.

Do NOT include the balance in any of the categories listed under 'Allocations' in the Outflows section. What is NOT a spending account? Your Retirement Fund, Emergency Fund, College Fund, etc. A checking account, your wallet, and/or savings account might be considered a 'spending account' if money leaves your possession from that account (like paying bills from a savings account or paying a cab driver with money from your purse). The purpose of the beginning/ending cash balance section at the top of this spreadsheet is to show how much cushion you have in your spending account.įor the Beginning Balance, enter the sum of the amounts in your spending accounts on the chosen start date. Keep in mind that spreadsheets allow you to make more mistakes than software like Quicken, because spreadsheets use formulas and calculations that you may mess up by accident. If you want to use a free spreadsheet with the ability to enter transactions in account registers like you do in Quicken, you can try the Money Management Template. Quicken was my personal tool of choice when it comes to personal money management (before they switched to a subscription fee). It's mainly for people who don't already use Quicken (you can generate a report like this from Quicken very easily via the Reports menu).Īlthough there are some really cool things that can be done with Excel to make this worksheet more useful, I have intentionally kept this template simple. It includes a fairly comprehensive set of expense categories and was designed to be easy to understand and simple to customize. This worksheet was created to be used as an educational resource for personal finance classes.

Personal budget excel spreadsheet template