So, I’m going to be honest off the bat - I am not only making this post to help you, but to help myself. I used to be SO good with my budgeting, but since quarantine-times I’ve gotten super lazy about it. I am writing this post to share my budget spreadsheet with you, but also to hold myself accountable and get myself back on track with budgeting (because let’s be honest, my Amazon addiction is totally out of control these days).

I started using a budget spreadsheet years ago, and with the creation of Google Sheets & the app to go along with it, it became even easier because I’m able to edit it on the go instead of having to sit down and balance everything at the end of the day/week/month. While I have the sheet I’m sharing with you set up to be a family budget, I just want to talk a little bit about how my husband and I have our finances set up. Every family is different and what works for us may not work for you, but I feel it is worth it to share our experience and how it works with my own personal budgeting.

My husband and I have a joint account, but we also have our own separate accounts. We have direct deposit set up for everything, and we make sure our direct deposit into our joint account pays for all of our joint bills - mortgage, utilities, car insurance, daycare, etc. along with extra for savings or household projects. We don’t have a debit card for our joint account, all our bills are set up to auto-pay and we can only access the money by account transfer. Our separate accounts are for our “personal” bills (ie credit cards, student loans) and then whatever money is leftover in our separate accounts is our “fun” money. The only joint thing we really use our personal accounts for is groceries, and that’s because the bill varies every time I go shopping and I don’t really want to have to transfer money for groceries all the time (instead I send a chicken wing emoji Venmo request to Adam!). For a while I used my budget spreadsheet to track ALL of my money, including what went into the joint account, but I felt that it was tedious to do that. While my budget spreadsheet may not be an accurate representation of what I actually make/spend, it is an accurate representation of the money I have instantly available to me. Basically, you can use this spreadsheet however works for you or your family, and you can of course edit it to fit your needs!

Another trick I’ve always used with budgeting is entering in less money than I actually have to build myself a buffer. I started entering my “income” as $25 less than what was actually deposited, and eventually build myself up to saying I had $150 less per pay period than what I actually had. This not only gives a nice buffer, but is a nice way to build up some savings. You can transfer this money to savings at set intervals, buy yourself something nice, or just leave it there knowing you have a cushion in your bank account in case something unexpected comes up, which is always a plus.

There are going to be instructions included on the sheet, but I will give an overview here on how to use this budget spreadsheet. First, sit down and look at your bills - think about what categories you want, what things you can lump together, and what things you really should separate (ie., I have rows for just Amazon and Target because those are places I need to curb my spending, so I like to see the actual numbers). There are pink (purple? mauve?) columns and yellow columns - the pink are your estimated amounts, and the yellow is what you actually spend. You will fill out the pink columns down to the red line. DO NOT change anything below the red line - I’ve added all the formulas to do the work for you! Then fill out the yellow columns on the go as you spend (sorry, you’ll have to do some math on the run). Watch the totals and track your spending on the go, and the best part is, you can look at it on your desktop or on your phone/tablet/etc since it’s all attached to your Google account. There are also separate tabs for each month so you can see a pie chart of your monthly totals and see, in real time, where your money is being spent.

So, are you ready to try out your new budget tracker?! HERE YOU GO!! Please, don’t forget to save a copy to your own Google drive. This is seriously the most important step!! You do not want to edit the shared copy on my drive - I will periodically check it and make sure it is still a blank template, so if you do enter your budget info here, it will be deleted. Save a copy to your own drive, and then it’s yours to edit as you wish!

Will you use this budget tracker? Do you have a different way to track your budget? What are your thoughts and methods?? Please share in the comments below!!