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August 29, 2005
Spreadsheet Budgeting
This post is part of the Budgeting Mini-Series.
Here's an Excel spreadsheet that I created and have used in the past to keep track of my budget (I'm experimenting with some other things, like paper, right now, but this works perfectly well).
The spreadsheet contains a worksheet for planning your budget in a similar way that we did with a sheet of paper on Friday.
But there are also a few other worksheets designed to help keep track of your expenses, in order to make it easier to see how well you're sticking to your budget. There are user-configurable categories and sub-categories that are used to create pull-down menus for entering transactions and creating reports and charts.
You can find detailed instructions on the worksheets themselves: download spreadsheet (zipped).
Share your own budgeting spreadsheet
I'm sure a lot of you have used Excel to solve the same problem. I think it would be interesting to see them and compare how other people have gone about it.
If you have a spreadsheet that you use for your own budgeting, and you'd like to share it, leave a comment with a description and link to it. If you don't have (or don't want to use) your own web hosting, feel free to email it to me (frank [at] frankpape [dot] com) along with a description/instructions. I'll post it here and give you credit.
Be sure to make a copy of the spreadsheet first and remove any sensitive personal information that you might have in it!
Posted by Frank at August 29, 2005 10:22 AM
Comments
Posted by: spnyc
at August 30, 2005 10:17 AM
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i have to say that i totally agree with you about using an xls doc to deal with budgeting. i used to use my own spreadsheet until i stumbled upon YNAB ( http://www.youneedabudget.com ). YNAB totally changed the way i deal with my money and specifically my outflows which is something i really needed considering i am trying to save up to buy an apartment.
only one caveat, it costs $19.95, but that was really some of the best money i've spent in a long time. also, the developer is very responsive to feedback and questions.
cheers...