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Budget and Money Allocation


Getting down and dirty today...here is a printout of my budget spreadsheet. I use Google sheets, which has an app that allows me to update on the fly using my phone.

I hope this can be educational for some, motivate others, and make a lot of people feel great about their personal financial situation compared to mine (even without totals, it ugly!). Many of us are in different situations, and the goal is to keep falling forward making progress daily.

Leading the left hand column of green blocks is revenue, or simply net take home pay (after insurances, 401k, health savings, and taxes paid). I don't have other streams of income but if you do, I'd list them here.

This is followed by line items for life expenses, loans, credit cards, savings, recreation/entertainment, and misc. I like the simplicity of these categories. I'm not the type that likes to break down spending categories to the minutiae. The first blacked out column is what I budget to pay for each 30 day cycle, second blacked out column is where I track what is actually spent. The line item savings is where I budget my non-monthly bills (car insurance and registrations, heating oil, water/sewer) and emergency fund. My savings account is with the same credit union as my checking, so it's easy for me to access those funds online when those bills are due.

You'll see it says 2-15-18 above the 4th column. This is the date I started my 30 day budget cycle. This is when I could start allocating money towards March bills (you'll see due dates in the first column next to each bill). I carry the leftover balance in my checking from the last cycle, and start again. This is where my personal preference for money allocation kicks in.

When I start the new cycle, I start paying bills in order of due date. Each week I get paid, I pay off as many line items as I can while leaving $xxx.xx in my checking. I leave roughly the same amount each week, all other income is already accounted for. The money I leave in there is roughly what I would spend on groceries and gas for the week with a small buffer. I personally don't carry a lot of money in my checking, I want that money paying down balances (or if fortunate enough, I think you're better off putting that money in a higher yielding account).  This helps me not spend on things that aren't in my budget. If I do spend, I would put that amount in recreation/entertainment or misc. While I budget money for those things, if I don't spend that money, it goes towards debt.

Remember, I'm choosing to pay minimum payments on everything, except for one debt item. Any extra money for the 30 day cycle gets put towards paying that one down (right now it's Discover, only CC with interest on it currently). When the cycle is complete, I reset the totals and start again.

Each budget cycle allows me to see my spending habits. I either need to change my budget, or change my spending! For instance, for this current cycle I'm noticing we're still spending too much on groceries and will need to visit this.

You'll see in the middle I have my debt totals listed. I update balances at the end of each month. As you can see, one Chase account has been eliminated since I started this journey. I leave it's carcass there as motivation to kill the others. To the right of debts, I balance off the totals of all my accounts, positive and negative. This gives me a complete picture, and my net totals. Someone recently commented on 529 education accounts, which I do have established for the girls, but I don't include here.

I like using a spreadsheet, because it's a user friendly way to put in the formulas needed to easily track everything on one page. If you want help constructing one, message me.

There it is, feels like I'm standing naked for all to see. I've had a few people ask me about personal budgets, so my ultimate hope is that this will help. Working in the wellness field and having to count small victories most of the time sometimes, I'm constantly being told "if you help just one person"...I guess that's a good thing.

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