Wanting to start a budget? Intimidated by all the choices? Just want something simple to get you going? Stephen P. created his own budget spreadsheet, and he's offered to share it with Get Rich Slowly readers. He writes:
I have something for Money Hacks. It's a simple budget spreadsheet that I made in Excel when I was making $30,000/year and struggling to live paycheck-to-paycheck. It helped me to keep things in perspective. Things you can do:
- The tax table pulls from married filing separate. It is in the first 14 or so rows of the blacked out columns to the right of the sheet. If you want to change the tax table, just change the taxable values.
- My fiancee recommended that I add in a pets row, so I did that, and its now under personal expenses. If needed, this could be changed to be child-related.
- Default value for 401k pretax savings is 5% (Typically, employers match some portion for 5% of gross)
- Health insurance typically comes out pretax, hence why its green. You can also put in FSA money here too.
- The pale yellow cells is of course where the budget information is entered . I tried to put those cells where most people would have the easiest time budgeting.
This is based on a lot of input from financial planners. I think it works really well. Let me know if you like it!
Give Stephen's budget spreadsheet a test-drive. Drop a line with any comments or suggestions.
Author: Stephen Popick
Stephen Popick is a government economist and founder of Coffeecents.org, a personal finance program for young adults. He loves coffee, even if his habit will cost him a latte-a-day million in thirty years.
Thanks! I had been sticking numbers in a pretty sad looking spreadsheet but this is really nice. Makes it real easy to try some different “what if” scenarios.
Very well done. I like the financial research that was put into this. One thing that seems to be missing. Charity, church donations, etc. Otherwise perfect.
I think the following is missing from E29:
=D29/12
Thanks. I’ve made the correction.
Please advise. I use Open Office 2.0, How can i download and try it?
D6 should read “=D1-D3-D4-D5”
Right now it is taking your C1 income field and subtracting taxes from that, instead of the D1 field, which would be gross minus any pretax contributions (though social security/medicare should still be taxed on C1).
I have developed a web application to keep track of my own expenses. It’s a standalone application. Would be interested to know what your readers think of it.. The latest version is available on the link off of http://prolificprogrammer.com/blog/2007/03/23/how_to_keep_track_of_your_chec.html — enjoy!
I have something that can complement this budget spreadsheet.
I made this Excel spreadsheet that automatically keeps a running total of all your expenses. All you have to do is input your daily spendings and choose which category they falls into.
http://www.harvestsb.org/savvysteward/wp-content/uploads/2006/Sample_Budget.xls
How do you open the application using microsoft works
I do not have excel
I do have the microsoft works spreadsheet
Pretty unrealistic on health cost – our health insurance is over 13% of after tax income for a family of 5. The total for the “personal life” category is only 10%.
Also property tax alone is 11% of our shelter budget.
Do you see comments on ancient posts? I was following a link-storm and ended up here looking at budgeting spreadsheets.
There’s something weird about this spreadsheet I just don’t get: The Net Worth is equivalent to Gross minus the sum of 401(k) contributions, Health Insurance, and $2 per dependent.
I followed it up until that last bit; any idea what that’s supposed to be?
Anyway, great resource. Thanks for posting it 🙂
It seems that the spreadsheet link above is broken. Gives me an 404 error.