To manage your household successfully, you have to budget the money that you make. Yes, you have to. Unless you hire someone, which I don’t recommend when you can budget your money for yourself quite easily.

Putting the budget together in the spreadsheet is not the hard part.
Surprise! It’s the staying on top of it that’s hard. That will be covered in an accountability post in a few days…so sign up for my RSS feed so you’ll know when I post it.

When you open the following document, you are welcome to copy it into your own spreadsheet program and modify it to the needs of your household. If the formulas don’t work after you’ve modified it to your needs you simply edit the cell formulas.

Personal Budget Example

For example, in the income section of the budget, there are two allotted spaces for income, and the total income formula is “=SUM(D6:D7)”.
D6 Represents Income #1 and D7 represents any other income you may have.

Additionally, in the Fixed Expenses section of the example, there are several spaces for your fixed expenses in your household, you don’t have to fill that up, just use what you need. The Total Fixed Expenses formula is “=SUM(D11:D19)”.

The Variable Expenses section of the example also has several parts that you can fill in, and the formula for the sum of your Total Variable Expenses is “=SUM(D23:D28)”.

The Total Fixed and Variable Expenses formula is the sum of the two columns entitled “Total Fixed Expenses” and “Total Variable Expenses” which is displayed as “=D20+D29″.

A variable expense is a bill that has the potential to change and isn’t considered a necessity. A fixed expense includes things like housing, transportation, childcare, utilities, etc. Things you cannot live a normal life without. Starbucks and cable/satellite are not on the fixed expenses, they’re variable expenses.

The Difference between Income and Expenses is the sum of the expenses minus the income. Which looks like this “=D8-D31″.

Finally, if you add a column or a row, those cell formulas will have to be edited to accomodate your changes. There’s a groovy little backwards “E” tool between the hyperlink tool (looks like a globe) and the Sorting Tools (A-Z, Z-A) that you can click on the arrow next to it and it’ll give you several formulas ready for your use for anything else you may want to add.

Are we having fun yet?

This is turning out to be a bit of an Excel lesson as well, but it’s a necessary thing to do. I don’t want you coming away from this unable to manage your personal budget. I’d also like to take this opportunity to open the door to questions, if you’re having trouble with your spreadsheet(s), comment here and I’ll contact you and help you out.
Please be descriptive in your questions.

Okay, back to the budgeting lesson :). I promise we’re almost done. Just a few modification tips.

If you want to add to this spreadsheet because I didn’t give you enough room in my example it’s fairly simple. Click on the row where you would like to add a row above, then go up to the toolbar, and you should see the following options:

File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Data, Window, Help

Click on “Insert” and select “Row” (which is a horizontal row).

Columns are the vertical alternative. You can go through the same steps to add a column if you so desire (don’t forget selecting the column that you want the new one in front of).

Now once you’ve finished modifying it to your bills and have input the money you make, etc. , which is fairly easy, I want you to save it to the most convenient place to you on your computer. My budget is on my desktop because I work in it so much. I have a year and a half of old budgeting and six months in advance done. The beautiful thing is how easy the spreadsheet is to copy! All your hard work is done, all you have to do now is make your money and enter your bills and the math will do itself!

When you need to make the next biweekly budget, instead of changing a bunch of numbers and losing your previous information (which can come in handy) you simply right click on the tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet and name the spreadsheet (I use the payperiod date I’m on). Once you’ve done that, right click again and select “Move or Copy”. Click on “Move to End” if you want your spreadsheets to be in chronological order, don’t check it if you want the new one on top. Then check the box that says “Make a Copy” and viola! You have the next biweekly budget with all your info, you just have to tweak the numbers.

That’s a dreaded chore, but you’re glad now that you did it aren’t you? Another wall to your financial house is up and it should feel great!

Pat yourself on the back and go get an ice cream!