I would really like to download your budget but the link for the Excel download does not work it seems to be linked to another page on your website.

A few things I really like about OOTD are: Its unique approach to handling one month at the time, then saving it, closing it and moving to the next month means it will handle all the years of budgeting I care to throw at it until my dying day, month by month. It has the easiest expense tracking I have seen with a tracking column on the same page next to the budgeting column. It has Cash Put-Aside management built right into my budget and it has a thing called Credit Card Debt Terminator also build into the budget, this alone was worth using OOTD for me because it helped me wipe out my bad credit card debt in 8 months flat.

Excel is definitely a powerful tool, but web apps are quickly gaining power and worth checking out.

http://simplemoneyplanner.com

However it seems to be on early developing stage it’s simple like a hammer …

http://www.lulu.com/content/1581272

Thank you Jeff and Wave!

Thanks so much for sharing this Jeff, you’re awesome!

I personally didn’t care enough to enter those taxes, so I simply input my Net Pay number manually, instead of calculating it from gross. You could certainly add tax lines and calculate them if you wanted.

There is no place to enter in taxes that are withheld from a paycheck. Am I to create this field myself or do I enter the gross pay minus the taxes in the Gross Pay field?

I am modifying it a little bit and will share my template with everyone once i am finished, if anyone would like to see it.

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As a side item, I’d like to mention that I only subscribed to your feed a couple of months ago, but I have been thoroughly impressed. After working on your blog for so long, I’m sure you are accustomed to compliments. At the same time, it is always nice to know that your contributions are appreciated. I do appreciate yours.

1. Once a year (actually, I’ve only needed to do this once in my life) I tracked every single penny that I earned or spent for just ONE MONTH. I was $30k in debt then.

2. Now, I calc my Net Worth once a year (CNNMoney has a calculator on their site), divide by 40 (I am VERY conservative) and that’s what I spend for that year. Simple!

3. Anything extra (business earnings, contracts … basically, any money that I earn that carries risk) is saved and added to my Net Worth when I repeat the calcs next year.

1. was my ‘starting out budget’; 2. and 3. is my ‘retirement budget’; I find once a year plenty for both.

However, there are 2 things I do that I don’t see on your sheet. First, I put the due dates for my various bills, and label them a certain way so that I remember how they are paid (automatic bill pay via bank, manual bill pay, automatic from biller, or manual via biller website). Second, since I get paid 2 times a month, I split my bills up by whether they get paid out of the first or second paycheck of the month. I also split my rent between the 2 paychecks and try to keep the amounts paid in each half of the month about the same.

Anyway, just a couple of ideas you might want to think about incorporating into your own spreadsheets.

[...] A Budget No Credit Needed: Living On A Budget – Don’t Knock It Until You Try It Get Rich Slowly: A Free And Simple Budget Planner Free Money Finance: My Confession: I’m Not Doing A Budget For 2008 Consumerism Commentary: Actual [...]

I download all my transactions from my bank website and copy them onto a Register sheet. I have a field for type of expense and notes.

I have another sheet which will perform SUMIF calculations based on the type of expense and date range. Since I get paid twice a month, all my expenses are based on each paycheck.

A third sheet compares my budget to actual spending for each period. This lets me know my progress as far as deviating from expenses, which I use to control spending and revise future budgets.

Finally, a cover page gives me a quick look at my current period spending versus budget, anticipated expenses, my current account balance, and expected balance at the end of the period.

Sounds complicated, but for us desk jockeys who play with numbers all day anyway, it’s pretty simple. I’d upload it somewhere, but don’t know where, and it isn’t too user-friendly for anyone else (yet). But it does the job better than any program I’ve tried to date.

And best of all, I am living within my means for the first time and paying down debt on my current salary.

So…when you get your paycheck, then, you actually enter the pre- and post-tax deductions IN your budget, copying the figures off your pay statement?

I can see the advantage of this, in that it would allow you to run a report that would produce figures you could compare with your W-2. I’ve just been entering net paychecks and (incorrectly) trusting to my employer to get the various figures right…big mistake. In this year’s PeopleSoft fiasco, so many screw-ups were generated that not one thing is right. It’s clear the W-2 My Beloved Employer and its pal, PeopleSoft (aka Laurel & Hardy) is wrong, but without having kept track of all the figures on my paycheck, as you have done, I can’t even imagine how to find their error and explain it to them.

Devin

For example, if you’re considering buying a new car, or changing your cell phone plan, etc., simply insert a new line into your budget, or change all the data in the cell phone line item. THEN “save as” a different name (like, maybe, “new car possibility”), and you have it right there for as long as you need it (i.e., as long as it takes you to decide that you really don’t need a new car).

I built an Excel budget at the beginning of 2005 that essentially tracks what I *could have* in savings if I’m able to stick to the budget. Each day I update my checking balance, savings balance, IRA balance, and any automatic payments that have hit, and my financial potential is automatically updated through the end of 2011.

Of course, not everything can be known 100% that far in advance, but as we say in the Army, an 80% solution now is more helpful than a 100% solution too late.

Always get such terrific tips from this site.

Hydes

Also

http://www.lulu.com/content/1581272