Saturday, February 12, 2011

Budget Instructions


            *As you are entering information don’t worry you can’t mess up the workbook.  I have protected it so all of the formulas and certain text cannot be changed.

1.     Open the Excel Workbook Small Budget 2011 or Large Budget 2011. Go to Save As and save the workbook where and what you would like.
2.     Click on the sheet (at bottom of page) that says January.


3.     You will see the green heading that says “January 2011” at the top of the page, right below is four blue boxes. In each one of the blue boxes you need to put in one of your list categories like food, gas, etc.  


4.     Right below the blue boxes you will see “Date & Place” in the box right next to it you will put in how much you have budgeted for the category that you have listed above it (in the blue box). Repeat this in the other long boxes (picture below).

      At the very bottom of each of the boxes you will see the total and next to it the same amount as you entered above.  As you enter in purchases this number at the bottom will get smaller to show you how much you have left in that category for the month.  This is the same for every other box in your budget.


5.     Below the four long boxes there is five smaller boxes with a blue section.  In each one of these boxes you need to put in one of your bill categories.  These should be your utilities, mortgage/ rent, phone, etc.

6.     Below those boxes there are 14 boxes with purple heading areas.  This is for your “first savings”, which is the savings that you will take out at the beginning of each month or when you are able to during the month.  In the “first savings” boxes put in things like car insurance, life insurance, oil changes, savings, anything that you will need to save for.


7.     Next go to the green box that says “Income”. This is where you put in any money that you have earned.

8.     Next to the Income box is “Withdrawal from monthly savings” you can put in purchases that you have made that you would have used your savings for.


9.     Go back to the heading January 2011 there is a box that says total budgeted, under budget, and total Income.  This will show through out the month how much you have budgeted for the month, how much you still have in your budget for the month (under budget), and how much income you have made for the month.

10.  Next to that you will see first savings, Extra savings, and Total Savings.  First savings is the sum of all of the purple boxes.  Extra savings is any money that you have left over, so if you are under your budget or have left over money that you don’t use from your income it goes into extra savings.  Total savings it just the sum of first and extra savings.

11.  Repeat this for each month, you can always go back and change any category later if you would like.

 12.  Next go to the savings sheet you will see "category" listed under the heading "Savings 2011".  Under category you will put in the categories from your first savings and any additional savings categories that you would like to have.  Example would be car insurance deductible.  You might not save for this each month because you already have all of the money there.

      As you enter the categories they will then appear below next to the “Date, What, and Amount”.  After you put in the category you can enter in the goal you have for each category, you can leave this blank if you don't have one.  At the top you will see the total in red.  This is how much you have in savings and should match your savings account. 

13.  Now each time you want to add or take away from you savings you would put it in your savings log. An example is if you were putting in your first savings for the month you would put the date under "date", under "what" you would put first savings, and under "amount" you would put the total amount of first savings. 


Then you would put in the amount that should go in each category under the category.  At the end of the row you will see a total it should match the amount you put in at the beginning.



      Lets say that to make things easier you decided that you were going to get an oil change and instead of moving the money from your savings account you decided to just take it from your "Withdrawal from Monthly Savings".  That will work just fine.  Below is a picture of how you would need to enter that into the savings worksheet.

     
      Under "What" put in Oil Change Monthly Savings.  Under "Amount" you would put in $0 because nothing is being added to your savings account, the money is just being moved from the Oil Change category to your Savings category.

14.  Next go to the Yearly overview.  What is nice about this is it just gives you a summary of what is going on in your budget for the year and you don’t have to enter in any information.  You can look back at it to compare how you did month by month.

If you have any problems you can always e-mail me or leave a comment.  I am more than willing to help you however I can.
 

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