Monthly Budget Template - Lines

What to Include in a Monthly Budget?

Here is what a Monthly Budget Spreadsheet typically records:

1. Estimated income of the person, household, or business . If you prepare a budget to deal with your personal financial situation, you must include not only salary but also child support, Social Security payments, benefits, bank interest, investments, gifts, and dividends.
2. List of monthly expenses . Analyze the last two or three months of spending to see how much you spend on rent or mortgage, insurance, car maintenance, transportation, travel, and entertainment.
3. Savings . It does not matter whether you have a particular goal - for instance, a large purchase or travel plans - or you are simply trying to have as much money as possible for hard times. Consider saving at least 10% of your money every 30 days to make your financial standing safer.

What Is a Good Monthly Budget?

A realistic and straightforward budget should guide you every day - make sure you stick to the rules you set for yourself. Use a Monthly Budget calculator to divide your income into categories and determine how to separate necessary and non-essential expenses from money you save and use to repay debts. You can apply a 50/30/20 approach - spend 50% of your money to deal with rent and groceries, leave 30% of the income for closing, take-out food, subscriptions, and keep 20% of the salary for savings and loan repayment.

Alternatively, you may create a Weekly Budget template if you have recurring bills every week. Once the calendar month is over, you can compute your total income and expenses by adding the numbers from statements you fill out every seven days and see the bigger picture to determine which expenses can be avoided in the future and how much income you can save in the upcoming months.

How to Create a Monthly Budget?

Follow these steps to compose a Monthly Budget Planner:

1. Draft a table to include all your earnings, expenses, and savings . Unless your target is to analyze the finances of several people or the entire company, this should be enough - a Personal Budget template can contain only three columns. However, make sure you leave some space for notes and remarks that may come in handy in case you have unforeseen expenses.
2. Focus on the most important categories of the budget first - rent, taxes, utilities, loans, and insurance . When you figure out how to deal with these financial obligations, you can move on to discretionary spending - clothes, travel, entertainment.
3. If you want to manage finances with your partner or family members, devote an hour every month to discuss general expenses and talk about the needs of your household before you fill out the handwritten or electronic template.
4. Adjust your template in accordance with your needs . For instance, a Business Budget template will include the income your business has received from the sale of assets and the irregular expenses that will not repeat every month or can be avoided completely such as brand new inventory and equipment while a simple Monthly Budget template you complete for yourself and your family will be easier to manage and change depending on the financial goals you have set for yourself.
5. It is highly recommended to use an electronic version of the budget to be able to modify it as the month passes - maybe, you will suddenly lose one of the sources of income and will have to tailor the expenses accordingly. In this case, a document you can edit on your computer or phone is the most reasonable choice.
6. Do not forget to check your receipts and financial statements for reference - these documents will show you how much you have spent recently so that you are able to have an approximate understanding of your income and expenses. Also, you can keep copies of your financial documentation in the same folder you put your Monthly Budget in and check them whenever necessary.

Still looking for a particular template? Take a look at the related templates below:

• Household Budget Template;
• Budgeted Income Statement Template;
• Startup Budget Template.