Reader Lyn sent us a budget system he drafted that has worked well for his household, as well as friends and family.
His Excel sheet has two pay periods for each month and is pre-set up for two people. First, enter both paychecks into the column B. Then, put expenses in their respective categories. Make sure to change the tax formula (line 37) to reflect your income bracket.
The formulas then tabulate how much money you have left over. You can plug and play with the numbers to see the effect adjusting various expenses, like getting rid of cable, can have on your budget. By adding in additional items, you could even set budget goals for different discretionary categories, like movies, music, binge drinking, etc.
It’s nothing fancy, but for a household trying to get a handle on their cash flow, Lyn’s spreadsheet could be a great starting point for building a personal family budget system.
Download Lyn’s budget here (XLS)
(Photo: Getty)
The download link leads to a 404…
The link doesn’t work for me.
@dariaclone: worked fine for me. I definitely need to get my budget in order, so i may play with this one some more later this evening. As an aside, does anyone have recommendations on personal finance software? I’ve used Money in the past, but I really don’t like Microsoft very much and would perfer to avoid giving them money anymore.
I’ve been using similar to this for the past year.
I have a sheet for each pay period which shows my income along with my wife’s as well as any other expected income like an expense check.
There is a lower section with expenses and I list every bill that needs to be paid during that pay period.
It allows me to look ahead to see what I get next period so that I can make sure all bills get paid. I can play with the numbers to see how paying extra on certain credit cards affects me at the end of the month.
I also have it set to carry over the balance from one sheet to the next so I can also add in to my income the previous pay period’s balance.
Still a 404 message for me. I’ll blame Comcast.
@dariaclone: 404 here as well on Mediacom.
I guess it doesn’t download with FireFox. IE (yuck) worked.
Thank you “IE Tab extension”
If you have a category called ‘binge drinking’, you should also have a subcategory for ‘stupid stuff I bought while drunk’.
It would be nice to have one that is for single peeps and showed it in a way that you could project the year out. Too bad I am excel-tarded.
@RandomHookup:
Like the Neosporin tote?
I found a really good one at http://www.personalbudgettraining.com
I’ve been using it for almost a year now. Very easy to use.
worked in firefox for me. And I’m using Linux! SO there! Try right-clicking and choosing “save target as”