Free Budgeting Tool
Published by Mark April 11th, 2006 in Budgeting, Personal FinanceHere is a simple Zero based budgeting tool created in Excel for your personal finances that we created for your use. It is based on Dave Ramsey’s “zero based budget”. The idea is that whatever money you bring in per pay period gets 100% allocated to a particular category. If you have excess dollars once you’ve allocated to all the categories then you need to adjust where your money is going.
The end result is that you will know exactly where your money is going every pay period. Another suggestion is to create an envelope for each category and withdraw the pre-determined amount of cash and place it in that envelope. When the money is gone from that envelope, you’re done! (or you move some money from another envelope.)
Try to remember that no budgeting system is fool proof. You still need to exercise discipline to make it work. It’s also possible that at first you may not allocate a reasonable amount of money for a particular category. In that case you’re going to run out of dough no matter how well you plan.
Remember to be responsible with your credit card purchases and your willingness to take out loans. Use common sense!
Click here for the free budgeting template
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36 Responses to “Free Budgeting Tool”
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I need to budget my money so that I can save for a house
This looks very promising. Thanks for the thought and work you put into it!
It´s a great tool.
Thanks,
Jef
I don’t have excel so I am using Quattro Pro 12. The spreadsheet looks great, but I am just starting to use it and when I try to enter the income, it says the cells are blocked. Any advice or am I just not understanding the spread sheet. Sorry, I’m not that familiar with excel. Any help you can give me would be appreciated.
Thank you
Hi Lana,
Sorry for the delay in the reply about using the budgeting spreadsheet.
I’m not sure if your problem is because you’re using Quattro Pro or if you’re just not filling in the correct fields.
This is how it works (basically):
You fill in the cells in the D and G columns with your desired spending pattern for every two week period.
For the income part of the spreadsheet you can use the “Income Worksheet” under column J & K. You may have to tweak your taxes etc to come up with the right number that you’re actually getting paid. Then this number fills itself in at the top of column D and G
Hope this helps,
Mark
This spreadsheet also will be good with % instead of a defined amount
Excellent - this helped me a lot. I’¨ve tried to roll my own spreadsheet, but I got butterfingers with Excell..
Again - thanks,
Roger
Great spreadsheet, but I need to be able to enter for a 3rd payroll and I can’t copy and add the column. Can you resend me one with a Period 3?
Ohh,impressive tools! Usefull for me =)
Thanks for this tool!!!
I’ve found a little bug: on cel E69 it sums E67-D68 while it would must be E68-D69
Best regards!
In general a good useful spreadsheet.
While you may be a Dave Ramsey listener and it’s not exactly your term, I think I’d change his term BLOW $$ on your sheet for a lot of reasons. It’s a stupid term that continually annoys me everytime I hear it. It brings up things like slang for cocaine etc. See the urbandictionary.com
I also think your sheet would be improved if you just concentrate on a monthly budget, rather than having Period 1 and Period 2 columns. It’s too confusing for people to have to break up their monthly expenses into two pay periods.
How about another sheet that tells what their emergency fund should be based on their current income? And another sheet that explains hints about what they are doing wrong? Example: Your car payments are huge in purportion to your income, Consider downsizing. Restaurant spending is 7% of your total gross income, consider cutting back the number of times you eat out.
“While you may be a Dave Ramsey listener and it’s not exactly your term, I think I’d change his term BLOW $$ on your sheet for a lot of reasons. It’s a stupid term that continually annoys me everytime I hear it. It brings up things like slang for cocaine etc. See the urbandictionary.com”
Ha ha! Good point. I will change it. Although some coke users may be disappointed they’re losing a very useful tool.
The main reason there’s two periods is that most people get paid twice a month. It wouldn’t be that big of deal to make a single period spreadsheet. I’m working on the next version. I’ll consider including that.
All in all your comments are very helpful. I’ll consider including some of your suggestions in the next release including the emergency fund calculations and other hint type feedback.
i would love to use this budgeting tool, but it keeps telling me the doc is protected and i need a password to unprotect it. Please email me the password!
I’ve uploaded a non-password protected version of the spreadsheet. It can be edited now.
Very nice work. We were just discussing in Dave Ramsey’s class if someone had developed an excel sheet, and here it is. Thank you for putting your time into it.
Scott
I get paid every other week, so in two months of the year I get paid three times, the rest of the year only twice. How do I adapt the spreadsheet to account for pay that doesn’t come on the same day(s) every month?
Great tool! Thanks for all the work you put into this. I have a yearly spreadsheet that I created to schedule my debt payments, but yours is perfect for calculating monthly expenses. And it’s much prettier than mine
Great Work! It’s similar to something I put together a few weeks ago, but yours is way nicer and more detailed.
Found a bug though - D95 should sum(d12:d94) instead of sum(d19:d94) G95 is the same.
Got here from consumerist.com.
I use OpenOffice and just started looking at the spreadsheet.
One suggestion. Have a consistent method of using (displaying) calculated fields/formulas verses input fields. For example, make the background for all input fields a light yellow. That way the majority of users can view the spreadsheet and immediately go to the input fields. If done correctly, written instructions (and notes) are not absolutely necessary.
Speaking of instructions, they say, “Put your income, debts, and expenses in the
before you over type it.
period 1 or period 2 due column (D & G) according to the dates they fall under.” But it’s obvious that D8 and G8 are an exception - calculated fields coming from J. The only way you know that is if you click on the spreadsheet note (little red dot) or scan over the cell and hopefully spot the =J15, etc.
Yeah, here is another person (actually both my wife and I) who gets paid every two weeks. Our paychecks are staggered so in reality we get a check once a week!
Thanks for all the suggestions. Here’s what I fixed:
“One suggestion. Have a consistent method of using (displaying) calculated fields/formulas verses input fields. For example, make the background for all input fields a light yellow. That way the majority of users can view the spreadsheet and immediately go to the input fields. If done correctly, written instructions (and notes) are not absolutely necessary.
Speaking of instructions, they say, “Put your income, debts, and expenses in the
before you over type it. ”
period 1 or period 2 due column (D & G) according to the dates they fall under.” But it’s obvious that D8 and G8 are an exception - calculated fields coming from J. The only way you know that is if you click on the spreadsheet note (little red dot) or scan over the cell and hopefully spot the =J15, etc.
SUGGESTED NOTED AND IMPLEMENTED. THANKS!
“Found a bug though - D95 should sum(d12:d94) instead of sum(d19:d94) G95 is the same.”
FIXED. THANKS FOR THE FEEDBACK.
Hi!
Improving your great work:
D9 and G9 would must have a white background, as they are calculated fields.
The yellow background would must be applied also into the Cash Flow tab (G column).
B9 would must have the same comment as B8.
The notes for D8 and G8 (into Instructions) apply also for D9 and G9.
Put the address of this entry into the spreadsheet
For those with irregular income periods, I’ve found another great free Budgeting spreadsheet at http://pearbudget.com. Give it a try!
Flavio,
I implemented your suggestions. Thanks for the feedback!
(I do think Pear Budget is a great program. More extensive for sure.)
Hi, Mark
Well done!!!
One more thing: What about if the values on “Cash Flow” B column were taken from “Allocated Spending” B column? Just my 0.02!!
For your information, there is a great little online personal budgeting website that is totally free and truly anonymous. It lets you open your private budget account with just your e-mail and asks nothing more from you.
You are immediately given a great looking, easy to use straight forward budget page, and you can also generate monthly reports to your e-mail for safe keeping before end-of-month closing and starting a new month. The budget categories are not user modifiable but the set is very rich and flexible covering just about any practical category plus a few catch all miscellaneous category, not a bad deal for a free utility. And there is an instant super easy to use online users billboard that holds discussions among users and the developer too.
The website is at:
http://www.myexp.org/OOTD_gate.php
Happy budgeting.