Save Your Marriage, Make a Budget – Free Worksheet Download

Can you believe that my husband and I never argue about money? Well, at least not since we started budgeting many years ago. Don’t get me wrong… we’re not some sort of super lovey-dovey couple who never has had an argument. (Remember… we have patience sucking rug-rats too!) I definitely attribute this great aspect of our marriage to the fact that we’ve managed to jointly create and maintain a good budget! Date nights on the other hand… that needs some work!

So for those who earn and/or spend money (be it a little or a lot), I highly suggest working with your spouse to create your family budget! This is how we do it:

Step 1: The Yearly Budget Worksheet – Google Drive Doc 

Several years ago I made this worksheet for my family’s budget and it’s actually really simple. It gives me a place to fill out all of my income and expenses for the whole year and it does some simple addition and subtraction. Pretty much the opposite of rocket science. I like to budget for a whole year at a time because I feel that it gives me better control of my money and allows me to better plan for the large and random expenses.

Filling out this worksheet is the first and most time consuming step in my budgeting process. This is a Google Drive document that you can save to your own Drive account or download to your computer. Need some spreadsheet pointers? No worries! Just check out the video. (If you’re already good with spreadsheets, then you can just skip watching me fidget).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us1paHOt1o4

Step 2: Setup Budget Tracking Program

After you’ve filled out the worksheet, you can transfer your info to the budget tracking program of your choice. Why don’t I use this software for the first step? Because they usually don’t work well when trying to predict a whole year’s work of income/expenses which is how I prefer to budget.

So what budgeting programs are out there?  Here are just a few:

• YNAB is my current favorite. It costs $60. There is a desktop application as well as a great app for your phone. This software does not link to your financial instuition.
• Mint is a free budgeting site that I’ve tried and I have to mention it because it’s very popular. I really like the capabilities of Mint and the phone app. But…. I had a lot of problems with Mint showing me duplicate transactions. Maybe this won’t happen to you.
• Cheryl wrote about several other budgeting programs last year.
• Then of course there is the envelope method for those who like to use cash.

Step 3: Track & Maintain Your Budget

This part is both easy and hard. The hard part is being consistent about going into your budgeting program to enter transactions and/or assign categories. The easy part comes when you find a way to do this consistently. If you wait for weeks or months you’ll have tons of transactions to deal with.

What works best for me is to enter transactions into my budgeting program every single day. Before the kids are up in the morning I sit down with my coffee and my phone and it takes me no more than 3 minutes to enter the 3 or less transactions than came into my bank account from the previous day.

What happens when I let this part slip for a few days/weeks? My budget goes haywire! And I’m much more likely to say something like… “there’s enough money in the account… I’ll just buy that fancy new lens!” (True story.)

Happy Budgeting Jacksonville Moms (& Dads)!!