Budget spreadsheet: A How-To

Let me start by saying that I am in no way taking credit for this spreadsheet! Luther came up with it a few years ago and I had no idea how he did it! I never was any good with Excel. Now that it is set up, all I have to do is enter the numbers! The way our spreadsheet works may not work for you and your family; however, I've had several questions on how to do the spreadsheet so here's my post:) I hope this post isn't too confusing but it is hard to describe the steps to take to make our spreadsheet. Here goes nothing!

As I mentioned in a previous post, we have our budget divided into categories. The first step to creating the budget spreadsheet is to divide your columns into your money categories. For example, our "A" and "B" column are both designated for food, "C" and "D" are both designated for gas. We use two columns for each section. The first column for each money category is for the name of the store or for what you purchased (i.e. Walmart, Wendys, Food Lion) and the second column is for the amount spent. We use all the columns through 'V' for our actual budget categories.

After we made our categories for all of our budget sections, we then made a column listing each section. The column directly beside our total budget column is the column where you input the formula.

After you set up the formula, every time you enter an amount into the appropriate column, it should automatically do the math for you in your 'totals' column. The number that is shown would reflect what you have left out of the money you budgeted for that category.

Making the formula:

Decide what you are budgeting for each money section. We budget $200 for gas each money. Our gas formula would then be:

=200-SUM(D2:D50)

After the =, put the total you are budgeting. That number minus the SUM of the cells D2-D50. We never use through the 50th cell in each column but we put that number in just in case.

Our "Transfer to Savings" section is just for us to know how much we were over or under for the entire month, in all categories combined. This shows us what we have to put into savings. If you want a similar column, the formula will be:

=TOTAL AMOUNT BUDGETED+SUM(Y2:Y12)

Your totals and columns will obviously vary from ours but this is how we track our monthly spending. Hopefully you will be able to apply this information towards your spreadsheets in a way that makes sense for you and your families.

Good luck and Happy Savings!