We currently use an Excel spreadsheet for our budget. I took
Michelle Singletary's free budget template (unfortunately I don't
remember exactly where it came from, but you can google for it) and added a
third tab where we enter individual transactions. Then the spreadsheet
adds them up into the "expenses" tab. (If anyone wants this, leave a comment with your email address and I'll send it to you.)
This is working pretty well on the whole, but
what it doesn't have is an easy way to see how much money you still need
to spend this month. For example, we haven't paid our rent yet (it's
due the 1st). But there is nowhere that our budget says, "Be careful!
You still have to pay this bill! That "extra" money is not really
extra!" We considered buying YNAB (www.youneedabudget.com), which has
really good reviews, but didn't want to spend the money right now. So first I'm going to try to edit the spreadsheet
and see if we can come up with something free. I'll post back and update.
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