Budget Spreadsheet Corrections
Published on - March 27th, 2007 (Modified on - May 23rd, 2007) (by J.D. Roth) Astute readers have spotted a couple of errors in the simple budget spreadsheet I shared yesterday. I’ve made corrections and re-posted the file:
Please let me know if you spot other mistakes!
23 May 07 Update: Greetings visitors from Zen Habits. This version of the spreadsheet is good, but Stephen created an updated version which you can find here. This is an ongoing project which will see continued refinements and improvements with time. If you have suggestions, please let me know!
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This article is about Administration, Budgeting
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Thanks all for the corrections, in trying to hide my sheet and move it, some things got messed up.
Hope it helps some of you out there in budgeting and saving. It’s set for very aggressive savings (which all things financial and economical tend to suggest is the right strategy now)
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Like the spreadsheet. A few comments:
1) Add new category – Debt. Includes credit card, personal loan, home equity loan, student loan, and maybe a few “blank” loans. I think this is a huge one.
2) Dependents – not sure what you are trying to accomplish here as it only changes the results a few bucks? Were you attempting to take the deductions for each? Also, are we talking about dependents or total exemptions?
3) Social Security – would be nice if you could put a cap on it as it maxes out at a certain level of income (97K or something like that?)
4) Any improvements to the tax bit would be nice (ex: adding a row for any additional pre-tax items such as insurance, etc. Essentially, getting to where you can pretty much reflect your check.
5) Shelter – association fees…think this is pretty common
6) Personal life – Education (for your or your kids, etc)
7) Homelife – maybe instead of “cleaning”, you could list “Upkeep” (cleaning, lawn, repairs, other maintenance)
I’m not sure if you were really looking for suggestions, but I think these are pretty common, would further refine what is a pretty nice tool. In particular, I think adding debt payment is important from a budgeting perspective (we are a debtor society after all).
Thanks again for sharing.
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If you want that kind of functionality, you might as well just get GNU Cash. It’s free and can open Quicken or MS Money files.
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IRA, E21 is showing D21*12 instead of D21/12. Just a small thing.
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I’m taking all of these ideas and correction and making the necessary changes. Keep em coming and we can make a “GRS Official Budget Planning Tool”
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I loved this idea, but really need spreadsheets to be my own for me to rely on them. I rebuilt this spreadsheet from the bottom up to meet my particular needs and included my own categories. I’d recommend this to anyone who is moderately spreadsheet savvy.
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Great spreadsheet. How about adding in Company Stock Purchase Plan? I agree with pfodyssey about adding in a Debt section for loans and credit cards.
Keep it up! I’m thinking of saving your spreadsheet to my google docs so I can have access to it wherever I go and use it as my main budget sheet. =)
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ill email jd with the latest version tomorrow
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This is exactly what I’ve been looking for! Thanks so much for sharing it. Now I’ve just gotta *use* it.
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[...] an excellent one already created: Pear Budget, Of Zen and Computing’s simple spreadsheet, Get Rich Slowly’s spreadsheet. The appeal of this is that it’s extremely flexible, it’s simple, it’s fast and [...]
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Shouldn’t the pre-tax retirement at the top along with other items deducted from one’s paycheck?
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wow…the spreadsheet is great.
I am totally in deep financial trouble.
Just realize it.
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I am going to return the copy of MS Money I bought a few hours ago…great spreadsheet already saving money
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When I click on the budget spreadsheet, it takes me to an error page.
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