Excel Monthly Family Budget Expenses Savings Envelope System

I have long been a money nerd. Every bit a small child, I used to empty my piggy bank, count everything that was inside, and put it all back in, feeling pretty practiced well-nigh my net worth as an 8-year-old.

And then, it should come as no surprise that the detail-oriented piggy-banking company counter has grown up to use a pretty complex system for keeping rail of my family budget. I mentioned to PT on our podcast conversation that I accept an Excel spreadsheet that I use to keep tabs on every penny that passes through our family unit's coffers, and he suggested I explain my arrangement. So without farther ado, hither is a breakdown of the arrangement I utilise.

Editor's note: even with all of the cool budgeting tools available today, the vast majority of my Masters of Coin guests utilise(d) some blazon of modified Excel spreadsheet to track expenses or budget (just like I did).

The Big Picture Excel Budget

With the help of my husband, who uses Excel a great bargain for piece of work, I accept fix up the following spreadsheet to runway our family'south income, savings, investments, and expenses:

Our Baronial Sail

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Right click here to download this family budget Excel template.

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During the start week of each calendar month, I print off the previous month's page so that my husband and I can wait over and discuss our finances. Nosotros use this monthly check-in to make certain we are on the same page and to increase or decrease any spending categories that might need it.

For instance, we tend to overspend in the dining out category every month. Betwixt getting lunches at piece of work, going out to dinner together for dates or as a family, or getting pizza or takeout on evenings when neither of united states experience like cooking, we have a tendency to blow through our dining out budget every month. Later a few months of this habit, we had to decide whether to scale dorsum our dining out spending, or increment that upkeep–or both.

Now allow'due south have a look at each individual component of my tracking:

Income

This is the simplest part of filling out our spreadsheet. My husband (Income one) gets paid on the 1st and 15th of the month. When his paycheck clears, I type in the amount in the corresponding calendar week.

We likewise set money aside in a Flexible Spending Account to help pay for our four-year-old son's preschool care. We receive a (very) partial reimbursement for his pre-school fees twice a month from our FSA. Sometimes the FSA money comes in within the aforementioned week every bit my husband's paycheck, as it did in August, and sometimes information technology comes the following week. I include that FSA reimbursement equally function of my husband's income each month.

Income 2, which is my freelancing income, tends to be much more variable and will often come up throughout the month. Some of my clients pay on the first of the calendar month, some pay on the 15th, and some pay upon receipt of my work. Whenever I receive a paycheck, I enter information technology into our spreadsheet.

"Envelopes" Savings Account

This portion of our budgeting system hearkens dorsum to when we used to follow the Dave Ramsey greenbacks envelope arrangement. When nosotros first got married, Dave Ramsey'southward cash envelopes helped usa tame our finances and cease many of our money arguments. It got us in the habit of setting money aside with each paycheck for regular and irregular expenses.

However, after several years of dutifully filling envelopes with cash, my married man and I found that we were causing ourselves–and by that I mean me–more piece of work. That's because we would often forget to accept the greenbacks with u.s.a. when we went out, which meant we would use our credit card to pay. I would then have to take the cash out of the envelope, deposit it back in the banking company, and and so pay the credit bill of fare with that money. Ain't nobody got time for that.

That's why I decided to but make the savings account in our home bank into an "envelopes" business relationship. Twice a calendar month, we make a deposit into the savings account for the full corporeality that nosotros would otherwise exist putting into cash envelopes. I personally go along rail of how much goes into each "envelope" (nosotros don't separate them out in the bank account, just in my Excel spreadsheet), then I know how much we take to spend in each "envelope."

Capital One 360 Savings Accounts

In addition to our "envelopes" savings business relationship, my married man and I also have a number of Capital One 360 savings accounts. (I've been a Upper-case letter One savings client since 2004, back when information technology was ING).

My married man and I refer to this as our mid-level savings. These are generally the irregular bills that we accept to pay each year. With each paycheck, we put bated some money in each of these accounts.

For example, back when my eldest kid started Sunday schoolhouse at our synagogue, nosotros received a nib for his tuition for the first twelvemonth. We were easily able to pay for the tuition, only after putting that check in the post, my outset activeness was to create a new savings account for Sunday schoolhouse tuition (labeled hither equally LJCRS), and fix an automatic transfer of ane/12 of the amount necessary for a twelvemonth'southward tuition on the first of each month. That style, the next year's tuition was already be funded and paid for.

Both the Car Insurance and Honda Motorcycle Insurance totals are relatively low in the higher up spreadsheet because we pay those bills yearly in June, and we have not still rebuilt those accounts.

In improver, you'll notice I have two different accounts labeled Taxes. The first 1 is where I park 35% of each of my paychecks. As a freelancer, I need to pay quarterly estimated taxes, so I brand sure to set up aside 35% of everything I make into this account. Putting the coin here until I need to pay it earns me a petty interest and protects the coin from me accidentally spending it out of my checking account.

The License and Taxes business relationship is for whatever Wisconsin state requirements, similar renewing our car licenses and titles and paying our property taxes. I set aside 1/12 of what I'll need for each of these bills on the first of each month.

Finally, my hubby and I each have a savings account for 40th birthday shenanigans. (His is labeled J's Midlife Crisis). He bought a new motorcycle (in improver to his Honda 400) for his 40th birthday in June of this year, and I plan to go to Hawaii when I plow 40 in 2019. We started saving for these milestone birthdays four years ago so that we were and are prepared to celebrate in style and in cash.

Spending

This portion of the spreadsheet is where I spend the bulk of my time in working on our finances. Each solar day, I log onto our credit card account and our checking account and bank check for any spending transactions. I categorize each and every transaction (and sometimes drive my husband crazy by calling him at piece of work to demand "what did y'all buy from PayPal on the 23rd for $34.76?!" simply to realize afterward I hang upward that I was the one who bought something and totally forgot most it).

If we paid for something in cash, with a check, with a debit card, or equally whatever kind of checking business relationship transaction, I enter the number in the jail cell and center it. That'southward considering any transactions fabricated on the credit bill of fare are initially entered as a number aligned correct.

Every Monday, I become through the transactions entered into the spending spreadsheet since the calendar week before. For any numbers aligned correct (credit card transactions) I transfer the coin from the advisable "envelope," and send a payment to the credit card. Once I've done that, I centre the number to prove myself that information technology has been paid off on the credit card.

This means that our credit card is e'er paid off, and I make a credit card payment every Mon to cover all cleared transactions for the previous calendar week.

In general, it's the envelopes that pay for our transactions, with a couple of exceptions. You'll see that J GP and Emily GP are listed in the regal section above. GP stands for Gazingus Pivot, which is the term coined in Your Money Or Your Life for unnecessary purchases. This is my airheaded fashion of categorizing fun money purchases, and those come from our checking accounts. (We accept one joint account and we also each accept a separate account).

In addition, our Mortgage, Utility Bills (almost of the pinkish section), Gas (for automobiles), 529 Deposits, and Life Insurance are all just taken directly out of either our joint checking account or one of our personal accounts, depending on how we've divvied up detail bills. (I take care of Mortgage and Life Insurance, for instance, while he pays the Utilities, and each one of united states of america takes care of one of our son's 529 Deposits, and Gas is paid for out of the joint business relationship.)

Investments

My favorite office of this spreadsheet is the one I work on the to the lowest degree. This is the breakdown of the money in our Vanguard account.

We opened this business relationship most two years agone when we got uncomfortable with the amount of money we had sitting in our Uppercase One 360 accounts. For instance, we had been setting aside the equivalent of a automobile payment into our CO360 New Car fund for many years, without needing to invest in a new car. While we've occasionally dipped into that fund for whatever car repairs or expensive maintenance that might otherwise exhaust our car repair envelope, nosotros've grown the New Auto fund in such a way that we could easily supercede one or both of our cars if necessary.

However, that ways we had a lot of coin sitting in accounts earning 0.75% APY. We could exercise better.

And so, we opened up a Vanguard account and transferred money from whatsoever CO360 account that I did not anticipate united states needing inside the next year to two years. That included New Car, New Computer, our anytime dream trip to France, my hubby'southward project machine, which is playfully nicknamed Ziggy, money leftover from my hubby's most contempo large Bonus, Furniture, and big-ticket Dwelling Repair.

You'll also find a section titled Taxes 2015. I was lucky enough to have money leftover that year from my Taxes savings account, and then I decided to move information technology into Vanguard to earn some interest. Finally, the Emily Retirement department was where I parked some windfall money (from a life insurance policy) that I put into my tax-advantaged retirement accounts in annual chunks.

My favorite function of working on this portion is calculation the growth, so I can know exactly how hard our money is working for us.

Ii Hours a Week on Excel Budget Spreadsheets?

Altogether, I probably spend nigh two hours per calendar week total in filling out these spreadsheets. Near half of that time is on Mon, when I figure out how much the envelopes owe to the credit card, transfer the money and pay our credit card, then update the spending cells to show that those transactions have been paid and update the envelopes department to show the amount that has been transferred from them.

The rest of the week, it by and large takes me less than ten minutes per day to log into our checking accounts and our credit card business relationship to update the spreadsheet and make sure everything is counterbalanced.

Finding a System That Works For You

I imagine the spreadsheet-and-upkeep-phobic probably retrieve I'm a three-headed alien from Mars right now. And this is definitely not a program that I would recommend to everyone. I know that a lot of people would rather clean a stadium with their own toothbrush than put in the kind of work that I do to manage my money.

This system works for me because I enjoy paying attention to the details and feeling like we're on top of our finances. You can wake me from a expressionless sleep and I could tell y'all how much is in our accounts, and that feeling would be worth the piece of work fifty-fifty if I didn't enjoy the taking care of the details.

However, I certainly know that my manner is non the but way to budget and that people tin find other systems (even automated ones) that fit their personal preferences and money psychology.

How exercise yous go on track of your family finances? Is there any aspect of my system that you think would piece of work for you?

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Source: https://ptmoney.com/family-budget-with-excel/

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