Question by Natasha: How to write a monthly personal financial budget worksheet?
I am trying to create a monthly budget worksheet on Rent, Utilities, Food, Clothes, Makeup, Savings, cell phone,
Best answer:
Answer by SoccerRefToo
Natasha
Personal Financial Budget Worksheet Methods :
It is a continually changing thing. So you will modify it all the time…. just make it better and more truthful.
Put down your net income in the upper left corner of a sheet of paper.
Down the left margin start listing your fixed the budget worksheet monthly payment ie rent, card payments, phone, utilities. You will need your check stubs, records etc to do this accurately.
Then 1/2 of the page over, list your optional expenses for things like clothes, food, cash, fun, ANYTHING that you control the spending of, and you could choose to pay or participate in or not. AND in an emergency you could stop, without changing the needs in your life.
The last column is to list your wants…. what else you would like to do with your money. Ex. save $ 50 per paycheck for Christmas. Save $ 100 per check for a car or emergency. Pay extra on my card bills.
Total the columns. Now you can see the goal.
If there is anything left after column one (necessary) you have it to spend on column two (other). If there is money after that you have money for column three.
If you have extra money after column three AND YOU ARE BROKE your budget is off buy the fun stuff in column 2!!!!!!
The idea is to fund it all, if not fund column 1 first, column 3 second, and cut the expenses in column 2 to fund the those in column 3. Necessities first, goals 2nd, controllables 3rd. Yes food is controllable (and necessary) but you can control a lot of unnecessary spending there…. especially getting cash back … which disappears. Starbuck’s, you can stop or cut in half. Shopping becomes a planned thing not an impulse thing.
As I said, a budget changes all the time… it is the habits that it creates that will stay forever.
Good luck!
Soccerref
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The link below shows excel options for budget templates; here’s my advice on building a budget:
First figure out income and monthly bills. If income varies, try using an average of recent paychecks or going with a low figure to be on the safe side. Check recent monthly bills to figure out how much is spent. If these are variable (change with the amount of usage like electricity), check out the last 12 months; this will let you know if more is owed during different seasons. Use recent receipts or bank statements to estimate how much you’re spending on discretionary spending.
Build the budget by pay period if you get paid on a schedule, if not build it by month. If you’re paid every 2 weeks, assign bills and spending to each paycheck – like first paycheck covers rent and second one covers other monthly bills. Here are my budget categories:
Monthly bills: rent, loans, insurance, electricity, cable, cell phone
Credit cards
Savings
Discretionary: groceries, gasoline, cash
Irregular expenses: medical, pet costs, car maintenance/repair, special events
Monthly bills are required payments and the amount doesn’t vary too much. Credit cards are also required, but the amount may vary (pay as much as you can). Discretionary items can be reduced if necessary. I budget irregular expenses to make sure I’m saving enough in prior months to be able to afford them. Having savings is the first step toward financial freedom. Put money in savings as an emergency fund in case of job loss, medical emergency or car accident; the minimum is $ 1,000, recommended is 3-6 months expenses. Determine the goal amount and how long it will take to achieve it; divide that into a monthly payments and “pay yourself first” by putting money into savings just like paying a monthly bill.
A great way to monitor spending is to put cash in envelopes for discretionary items and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Keep receipts so you can learn from them later. Building a reasonable budget is a process; it’s not going to be exactly right the first time. The important thing is to learn from your first attempt. Create the budget, do what you can to stick to it the first month and at the end of the month review what happened (with your partner if you’re sharing finances). What went well? What could you have done better? Most importantly: how do you need to modify the budget for future months?