Anyone have any budget spreadsheets or something?

[JKMastalski]

Anyone have any budget spreadsheets? I am trying to figure out how to do a budget and I can't seem to get started!

 

[coliebird]

I'd be interested in this as well. Thanks.

 

[Cindy B]

Regular budget or vacation budget?

 

[mickeyboat]

I know no one used Lotus anymore, although we still do at work. It has a template spreadsheet for a budget. Maybe Excel has one too.

Denae

 

[Rajah]

We also just found one online that is pretty good. A little slow and with a few bugs, but very intuitive. It's called Mvelopes It's not free, though. (This is a general budget software like Quicken)

 

[JKMastalski]

Household budget is what i am looking for.

 

[heathrow42]

Disclaimer: I'm paranoid about security and my personal info.. it's a side affect of my career doing internet security... so my response it definately biased!

I use a an excel spreadsheet.. I created one with all the fields I wanted and then printed it out. I don't even keep the info stored on my computer, I just fill it in every month and keep it in a binder. Across the top each month is listed, down the left side is each expense. Fixed expenses (same every month) are listed first. Variable expenses are listed beneath them. I generally use it to track bills.. but it could be easily expanded to track grocery and gasoline purchases, I just don't have the discipline or the need to save the reciepts.

I started this so that I could calculate what our monthly expenses were and account for them before anything else. For now I take the sum of the fixed expenses (mortgage, cable, phone, car payment, student loan, car insurance, internet) and divide by 4. There are 2 of us and we get paid twice a month. This amount is direct deposited into our bill paying account, right out of our paycheck. When there was a wide discrepency between our salaries, this amount was calculated by what % of the total income we made. I've done this for nearly 2 years, and think that maybe now I can add in the average of the variable expenses of gas, electric and water since i have enough info to be able to average.

The rest of our paycheck goes into our own separate accounts, of course we each put some in savings as well. My DH is fairly financially responsible, as am I.. neither of us would make a large purchase (over $100) without consulting the other, except around christmas time!

This system works for us.. we don't have to worry about mortgage and bill payments. We have friends who use one paycheck for bills, and the other for day to day expenses. The only downside is that we are both very acustom to being a 2 paycheck family.

I checked out mvelopes as referenced by a previous poster. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable turning over that much financial info to an online company (and one I had never heard of) They appear to track purchases you make on credit/debit cards you register with them, then you can file those purchases into categories and give yourself spending limits. What I can't understand though, is how an independent third party can get your credit card expenditures...

Hope this helps.. if not maybe the op could clarify a little more about what they are looking for?

--Heather

 

[Brisully]

How about from the Microsoft site?????

Link