Creating a Budget Worksheet makes your budgeting process a whole lot easier. A budget worksheet will help you to manage your income and expenditures in order to track excessive expenses and balance things out. This will help you to stay out of debt and manage your budget appropriately.
Everybody needs a budget to manage his income. Whether you are a student, a businessman or a family, you need a budget for successful personal finances management. You have a great edge if you know how to create a budget worksheet as you will be able to track the flow of your money appropriately.
How does a budget work?
The first step to creating a top notch budget worksheet is to understand the working processes of a budget. A budget is simply a laid down plan of how you will spend your money within a given period of time. A budget is an effective tool when it comes to staying out of debt and saving for a vacation, a car and so forth. More so, with budget, you will be able to track the flow of your money and know where it is going. Essentially, a budget tries to ensure that the expenditures are less than the income or at worse equal to it.
- Budget worksheets are most easily created with spreadsheet applications such as MS Excel. Spreadsheets present columns and rows for tracking the various incoming inputs.
- Many software tools available out there and even online sheets in creating a budget.
Sample Budget Worksheet
What is your goal?
Before a worksheet can be successfully created, you must identify your goals. Do you want to track your savings for something specific like getting out of debt, paying your way through college and so forth? Having determined your goals, it is high time you created a budget worksheet.
- Make a list of your monthly income
The accuracy of this might depend on how you get your money. An income is any money you get in the course of the month. It could be from a job, a contract or a gift. Add your income together in the worksheet. You may need to work out your monthly budget if your income is not from a regular source. - Make a list of your monthly expenditures
This has to do with regular bills such as loan payments, mortgage, water bills, insurance, electric, gas, phone, groceries and so forth. Estimate the amount of money you may likely spend in each of the categories and make a list of them. You need to be realistic here and put the items in a scale of preference in order to meet your incoming goals. Things that are of most important to you should have a greater share of money. Also track other expenditures such as annual and biannual expenses. - Go through your budget worksheet
Having created your worksheet, it is high time you went through it to see whether your expenses are more than your income. There is room for adjustment in case you have a shortage. You can modify your budget to ensure that it fits in that case. You are on the right lane if you have surplus – that is your income is more than your expenses.
