This forms the core of this particular budget. Make a grand total underneath the listing.

List each income on the left-hand side and the corresponding value or amount of money on the other side. Remember, every expense you eventually pay up for depends almost exclusively on the amount of money you rake in from the various sources.Īs you enter the income information, break the same to finer details. This is a listing of all the sources of money in your household and the amounts that each source potentially brings in. The delineation below helps to solve that problem: It all requires that you list down all the expenses on the one hand and compare it to the income on the other hand. Our budget is based directly off of these templates and we have used them for years in order to control our spending, show us were our money is going, and to give us timely information about the state of our finances.Using this template differs not so significantly from the normal templates you would use for other forms of budgeting. We have two basic templates that you can use to create your own budget. Below the video we also have links to a template that you can use to create your own budget. In the quick tutorial below you will see how we created our budget in Google Sheets and learn how to create your own. To complete our budget, we use Google Sheets. To begin with, we break our expenses down into two basic sections, wants and needs.ĭepending on your situation, you may need to edit your needs and wants, but we break them down into the following categories:īy keeping each of these areas in our budget, we are able to track our spending and determine if we really need something or if we want it. To get more specific with our budget we need to examine our costs each month. Some items, like our mortgage, or fixed, but others change depending on the month.

Our expenses, costs, are what change on a month to month basis. If your income is not as predictable, we would recommend that you update your budget often to better track your income and try to find an average monthly income. We know what we are going to earn each month, and we can plan very far in advance because of this. For us, we have two general areas that we use as our starting point, income and expenses. Once you have your general areas, you can begin to get more specific with each of the areas.

When you are looking to start a budget you really want to break down your areas of concern as simply as possible. You will also find links to our budget and downloads if you prefer a different version. Below you will find resources to help you start your own budget along with a tutorial on how we setup our budget. We use Google Sheets to help us keep our budget in order and with us at all times. Our budget is fluid, flexible, and works for us.

Basic budgeting spreadsheet