My Budgeting Template

My budget includes going to a coffee shop twice a week

Ever since I moved away for university when I was 17, I have had a budget which I have used to manage my finances. This is something that I have refined as my budget became more complex over the years with paying off my student loans, then saving up for a down payment, and now with mortgage payments with rising interest rates. I am sharing my template which can be applied to any financial situations, whether you are working towards becoming debt free or savings up for some big goals.

For this system to work for me, I have 3 bank accounts. One checkings account, where I get paid, and have certain expenses withdrawn from such as my monthly maintenance fees. Then I also have 2 savings accounts. One for my annual expenses which I will talk about more later, and another long-term savings account.

To get started, you can access the template here.

Numbers used as an example only

The first step is to go through all your bank and credit card statements from the last couple of months and write a list of all your expenses. For some items you will group them into categories, such as groceries, restaurants, coffee shops, gas, etc.

Then you need to organize all your expenses into two groups, fixes expenses and variable expenses. Fixed expenses are expenses that are consistent every month, such as rent, car insurance, your cell phone bill, internet, or any subscriptions. Variable expenses are expenses that change every month depending on your spending, such as groceries, coffees, eating out, shopping, you get the idea. While you are doing this try and get an idea of how much you are spending in each area.

Once you have a list of all your expenses, and I mean everything, then you are ready to start your budget. You will only need to update the cells coloured in blue, all the others will auto-calculate for you, and of course the names of the expense categories you want to manage. First, update your income. I have included a few options for income, if you are being paid bi-weekly, monthly, or have additional revenue coming in like a roommate paying you rent. Only update the fields that are relevant to you.

Then, update all your fixed expenses in the spreadsheet. I have just put in some generic examples so please update based on your situation. The next step is to fill in your variable expenses, and this is really where you must choose a budget. I also include a line item called Discretionary, this is for little things you end up buying by don’t really fall into a category but allows for a bit of flexibility in your budget and a way to still account for this spending. For each line item you need to decide what you want to spend in each area. Be realistic based on your average spending on the last few months.

Lastly, I have created annual expenses section. This is for any expenses you know you must pay this year, such as property taxes, car insurance, or tuition, usually in a lump sum. I also include irregular expenses in here such haircuts, since I only get a few per year, or traveling which happens only a couple of times a year but is high cost I want to have funds put aside for. I also like to add in a line item for unexpected expenses for a bit of an emergency fund as well. Once you have added all your expected spending in this category, you will get a bi-weekly savings amount.

I have set up auto-transfers between my checkings account and my annual expenses account lined up with my pay-days. On each biweekly pay-day, funds are automatically transferred into my annual expenses account before I even see it. This way, I can save up for big expenses such a property taxes and I have the money sitting in an account for when I need it.

I would highly recommend a line-item for gifts in your annual expenses, so by the time Christmas comes around at the end of the year, you have savings ready to cover everything instead or starting the next year with credit card debt.

At this point the formulas at the top will start doing the math for you with the row “Remaining Balance”. If your budget is over your monthly income, it will be negative, and you need to reduce your budget in certain areas. The Remaining Balance will factor in your annual expenses divided monthly.

If you have a positive Remaining Balance in your budget, then those are funds you can put toward expediting any debt repayments ahead of schedule or putting it toward your long terms savings or investments. I have created another tab called Goals. I like to fill this out last, because I think it is easier to make a more realistic and achievable goal once you know how much extra you will have left over each month.

In the Goals tab, there are options for debt repayment as well and for general savings. You could remain this to whatever you are saving up for, it helps keep your priorities in mind for when you are making purchasing decisions and you can see your progress toward that goal. For me, I am currently saving up for renovating my apartment, so I have title my savings goal “Renovation Fund”. Here you would just put in the balance of your savings account at the beginning of the year, and then update that monthly if you have extra to put away.

Alternatively, you could also use this to set a debt repayment goal by listing your total debt at the beginning of the year, and how much you want to pay off. The visual is also a good motivator for seeing the progress you are making throughout the year.

Now that you have your budget filled out you can copy your categories over to the January tab. Each month you can copy over your categories and budgets and track your spending against them. Each month create a new tab with the weekly broken out, and you can all your totals up on your Goals tab to see how you are doing throughout the year.

I track my spending on all categories weekly. This really helps me to course correct if I am trending too high in a certain area part way through the month instead of feeling bad at the end of the month when I have gone over budget. It can seem a bit tedious, but it has almost become a bit of a game to see if I can come in under my variable budget. By tracking each category like this, at the end of the year I will have the data to do a full analysis of my spending.

Tracking your spending this granularly can seem tedious, but you can’t manage what you don’t track. I hope this is a slightly more complex version of the average budget you will find online without being overly complicated. Please feel free to comment below if you have any questions!