I've realized that this helps a lot! A really simple thing, expenses, income, record of every expense with date and item... Is anyone this crazy, or are we all on board with spreadsheets? And if so, could you share what template you use? Thanks a lot, guys!
Hi, this is not a crazy thing to do.. in fact.. this is the right thing to do especially if you wanted to have control over your finance. Budgeting can be done use excel and you can properly set a budget plan.. for years if you want. so there is nothing wrong doing this. I am doing it for a very long time and it really put my focus on what I wanted to achieve and I am able to monitor my finances... where it goes.. and the amount of savings I got. I can do some adjustments if there are expenses going out of budget too... and things become more predictable and life becomes easy.. i mean.. financially speaking. hmm... template wise, I cannot share you mine because I never had one.. and I just work it out from scratch. Here's what I do.. Sheet represent YEAR. On each sheet, I put the month on column.. and the expenses/savings/others as rows. the column will give me the total expenses and saving per month... the rows will give me the total expenses per category.. and also the savings for each account that I have... that is how simple I made mine. Also, since there are so many mobile app that allows you to do this.. I also use one to keep track of my expenses. particularly, I use the mobile app CASHTRAIL very good, very effective and multi-currency. I use 3 different currencies so I am happy with all it's features.
I actually decided to start keeping a budget log each month starting in April. I just constructed in and am now just waiting for the new month to roll around so I can use it. I have a spreadsheet for controllable bills, such as credit cards and medical bills, a sheet for fixed bills like rent and utilities, a budget sheet for everyday spending, and even an income and coupon savings sheet. I am really excited to get going on this and see how many things I can cut from month to month.
Thanks guys! You're awesome. Yeah, that's pretty much what I do... Income/Expenses/Savings I actually just track the month at this point. I should do the year thing... I also track small daily expenses by writing an SMS on my phone and saving it, which totally sucks I also should upgrade to an App. Even on a small budget, you can cut a lot if you are disciplined every day... Thanks again peeps! Stay frosty
I need to start doing this, as it will probably help me save some money and not make so many mindless purchases. Right now I track my finances with mint.com, which is better than not tracking them at all, but it's also pretty passive. It's really easy to go over budget on things like, trips to the coffee shop, unless you check mint everyday and see how much you have left to spend in your budget. I'm guessing that there's plenty of templates for budget spreadsheets online?
I think this is a very good idea, but I leave all that to my husband. He keeps record of how much we make, our outgoings and overall spending. It's very good because it you can quickly glance at it and get an idea of the state of your finances, in any given month. Like Aurelia says, I'd also suggests that you search on the web for templates; I'm sure there's loads on there
