This makes it easy to see how much you need to put away. STEP 7: You can calculate these percentage out of your gross monthly income very easily. To illustrate this step for our purposes today, I set 15% of the monthly income to be portioned directly into savings, 5% for 401k, and another 5% for the safety net. These percentages will vary for everyone depending on what their goals are and how aggressively they save for retirement. For example, organizing how much you portion out of each paycheck for savings, retirement savings, and your safety net. STEP 7: Now, we can move onto the automatic savings section of your monthly budget. This is what it looks like with real (although completely arbitrary) numbers. Simply hold down the control key, and select the columns which will make up that “Total” number. STEP 6: After you’ve selected the “Sum option” from the “Functions tab,” you’re good to go. Navigate over to the “Functions” icon located on the right-hand side of your screen. STEP 5: Next, select the cell where you want the “Total” to appear - we’re going to create a very simple formula that will calculate the total and does the math for you. Step 4: Add a “Total” cell at the bottom so you can see what you’ve brought in that month in full (I’m using totally random numbers here for the purpose of this post). These numbers should reflect your income after tax. Step 3: In the column over, add the numbers that correspond to each source of income. If you’re a freelancer, this section will most likely look different each month, but leave yourself enough room to add and remove items as needed. STEP 2: Create a column, label it “Income,” and list out all your sources of income. STEP 1: Open up Google, head to your Sheets page, create a new sheet, and name it. Here we go - read on for my Excel budget template! Again, this is being done through Google Sheets, so you’ll have to have a Google account to use this feature.ĭO NOT be intimated by the number of steps or photos! Seriously, I see these guides online and I’ll scroll through and think I could never understand them, but it’s really very easy once you understand how to set up basic formulas. Today, I’m going to take you through creating a budget in Excel for the purpose of tracking your monthly budget which will include: tracking your income, seeing how to track your savings goals, and tracking/organizing your expenses. Personally, I use Google Excel Sheets to manage my expenses because I’m honestly too lazy to download the software to my computer. It’s also simpler to manage and keep track of everything since it’s stored in the cloud, and I have access to it whenever wherever.

However, this is simply what works best for me, and I encourage you to try out some different options for yourself. Now, a lot of people prefer using apps to manage their budgets, and there are truly a ton of them out there. We talk a lot about managing budgets here at TFD - Chelsea and I even made a video about it. Today, I’m going to go into more granular detail as to how one can actually create a monthly budget using my personal favorite method - Excel Sheets.

Sample budget sheet