How to Make a Budget Sheet for Expenses
Proper budgeting is one of the most powerful tools to have in your financial arsenal. By using a budget, you are telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. This gives you power over your greatest wealth-building tool, which is income. Using a zero-based budget, you spend every dollar you earn. Spend can mean spend on yourself in the form of savings and retirement or spend can mean spend on consumer goods and services, such as groceries and utilities.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
List out all monthly income sources.
-
2
Add up all monthly income sources to obtain total monthly income.
-
-
3
On a separate sheet of paper make a list of the following expense categories: Savings, Housing, Utilities, Food, Transportation, Clothing, Medical, Personal, Recreation and Debt.
-
4
Write down anticipated expenditures to the right of the expense columns until you have "spent" your total monthly income.
-
5
Your outgo should match your income. Do not expect perfection the first few times you attempt this. Once per week sit down and go back over the budget and make adjustments as necessary until you can make it work for you.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Take a look at the following example: Your regular day job brings in $1,800 per month. You also have pizza delivery job that earns an extra $900 per month. This gives you a total total monthly income of $2,700 per month.
Now, going in the order you established you simply work down the list starting with savings (15 percent is a good amount to go for if you can make it work) of $405. Next you add housing expenses of $775. After housing comes utilities in the amount of $305.Then you have food costs of $400. This includes both groceries and restaurants.
Now you will add in transportation costs of $500. This is your car payment and money for gas and an other auto related expenses that might come up. Then you are going to spend $50 on clothes, $25 on medical expenses, $25 on personal expenses (like a new book to read, or your gym membership dues) and $50 on recreational activities like going to some movies or sporting events. Finally you have $165 that goes towards debt payments. You have spent $2,700 and that equals your income for the month.
The above budget is for example purposes only. Your specific situation may vary.
References
- Photo Credit budget, payment allocation image by Kalani from Fotolia.com
