DIY Budget plan
Really excited about this project. Budgeting is one of the most important thing you must do. Done well, you know how much money you have, how much you spent, how much is coming, how much left that you can spend. Answering all those questions with a simple glance can help your reduce mental stress causes by finances. Let’s see how we can do it together.
I’ve been working on that excel for the past few years and try to make a friendly to use tool. I remember it took me half a day to do my finances, now it only takes a 1-2 hour max.
I like to do it 3 times per year for each semester (Spring, Summer, Winter). Basically, every 4 months.
Step 1: Download the excel template.
You can download the template and customize the way it fits you.
Download Excel file
Step 2: Make a list of your revenue and expenses.
Revenues:
· Work money
· Net sales (from flipping stuff on facebook market)
· Refund from Government (tax)
· Others (Cash back, gift, etc.)
Expenses: For expenses, you have fixed and variable one. Fixed expenses don’t change, you can forecast them more easily.
· Fixed: Rent, Electricity, Internet, Phone, Gym, etc.
· Variable: Grocery, Restaurant, Entertainment (games, toys, massage?), Clothes, Haircut, etc.
Step 3: Monthly Projection
I like this sheet because you can see every months how much you spend and where. For example, electricity you pay once every 2 months. Or let’s say you want to limit your restaurant spending to $20 per weeks (20$*4 = $80, $80*4 = 320$/ month), so you have to make sure you don’t go over 320$ per months. It will help later when we set limits for each categories.
Monthly project to see your revenue and expenses
Step 4: Semester Projection
Now that you have an idea of you monthly spending. Group 4 months together and we have a semester. It’s good when you are a student because it follows the Spring, Summer, Winter cycle. For workers, it’s nice to have a quick update every 4 months. (Doing it every months is too exhausting.)
4.1 Bank account balance/ Debts: We start with analysis of your cash and debt situations.
You want to know how much cash in every bank account you have and how much is your total investment account worth as of today.
Then, you want to look at your debts: Credit card, line of credit, etc.
A nice question to answer is “How much is my net worth? ”
If I take all my “cash” and pay off all my “debts”, how much do I have left?
4.2 Revenues: You want to have a breakdown of where your money come from.
4.3 Expenses: Where your expenses are? Fixed and Variable.
4.4 Extraordinary expenses and summary analysis
Most likely, you will incur some expenses which don’t fit in any categories and doesn’t happen often. For example, you bought a new laptop or cellphone $1000+, you purchase a course online $500, Budget travel $1000, etc.
I also like the “summary analysis”. You can see how much is left after your spending. And how much you are worth at that time.
Every 4 months, see your bank account and revenue
Every 4 months, see your expenses and net worth
4.5 Budget categories
Very important. The monthly and semester forecast will lead you to this table. We want to use it and combine it with a budgeting app to keep track of your expenses.
Categories for budget
Step 5: Expenses tracker app
I’ve been using different apps over the year and this one is the best.
What you should be looking for is:
1. Create budget with categories.
2. Easy to enter expenses (each time you buy something)
3. Export data to excel
I like “receipts” a lot. It’s very basic. Easy to input expenses, make categories budget, and send to your email an excel file.
Basically during the 4 months period, whenever you buy something or get “extra cash”, you want to input it in the app.
Alternative: Google doc -> Excel sheet
app
Step 6: Update excel sheet.
When the semester is done, you can just download the excel sheet and use “pivot table” to “sum” the data. It’s also nice to use filter to see each categories and which one is the highest spending. (maybe find ways to reduce that expenses). etc etc.
Rinse and repeat.
It’s important to take your time and “analyze” where you spend too much, how can you reduce cost, how can you make more money, etc.
SimpleLifeBalancing.