Budgeting Tools

April 13, 2006

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Once you've considered the issues of income budgeting and budgeting for expenses, you're ready to build your personal budget.

Although any type of personal budget plan that serves your purposes is fine, it's pretty safe to say that a workable plan will have all of these attributes:

is easy to use
encourages the collection of accurate and useful information
is consistently applied
is updated as often as needed
is used as a personal financial decision-making tool

While some people find greater comfort in creating their own budget on paper, we strongly suggest that an interactive electronic budget is easier, saves time, and provides more useful information than a budget done in paper. You can always print out the budget if you like to keep paper records.

The biggest advantage of an electronic budget is that it can provide "what if" projections, such as "can I double up on my Visa payment this month, without running into trouble next month?" Besides this, the electronic budget can save time by doing the math for you, and saving repetitive monthly expense entries.

Interactive Personal Budget Worksheets

Included among the Business Tools is our monthly budget worksheet. The monthly budget allows you to predict your monthly personal income and expenses over a six-month period. Its aim is to predict your ability to take in more money than you are spending.

This worksheet is an Excel template that can be used in Excel 4.0 or higher. Because it is a template, you can use the worksheet over and over again and still retain the original copy.

We've formatted the worksheet and put in most of the income and expense categories for you. All you have to do is put in your numbers and print it.

Once you've downloaded the worksheet, feel free to modify it to fit your own needs.

A personal budget may be used as a stand-alone tool to help control your current finances. It may also be used as one of the components in a long-term effort to build your personal wealth.

If you're creating the budget as part of an overall financial plan, the next step is to consider your current documents and arrangements that will affect your financial and estate plan.