Proper financial planning is essential for keeping a handle on your finances. With a yearly budget you will see your anticipated expenses so you can ensure you will have the funds available to meet your needs.
This month we have a handy Excel template you can download to use to track your family budget. Click here to download the budget for your version of Excel.
It will help if you gather up last year’s bills and bank statements so you have them handy when it comes to entering the details into the budget.
For 2014 you can type in the actual amounts you have spent to date and then the estimated amounts for the remainder of the year – or just start with the current month and work forwards.
Open the budget and see that there is a place to type the income you expect to receive each month and the expenses. The cells that are white are those will enter data into – the colored cells contain formulas that you should leave untouched.
Type the amount that you expect to receive as income in the cells in rows 9, 10 and 11. Then type the monthly expenses into rows 15 – 37. If you make a mistake, click in the cell that contains the wrong value and press the Delete key on the keyboard. If desired, you can type over any heading to change it to a category of expense or income more appropriate to your needs.
If you need a line for an added expenses, click on the heading in column B where the new row should go and, from the Home tab on the ribbon click Insert and choose Insert Sheet Rows. Now click in the cell above the new blank cell in column O and, from the Home tab on the ribbon, click Copy. Click in the empty cell below and click Paste to add the formula which totals that expense item.
If you type the amount you have in the bank at the beginning of the year into cell C4 the worksheet will keep track of how much you can expect to have in the bank each month during the year. The worksheet calculates what is left over once your expenses are subtracted from your income and it adds it (or removes it if you have had a loss that month) from the bank balance.
