If you feel out of control when it comes to your money, you are not alone!
Learning how to manage money isn’t something we are born knowing.
It takes practice, determination and consistency.
But I also promise that it doesn’t have to be the dreaded chore that so many feel it is.
Creating a budget can help you feel calm and more settled when it comes to your finances.
You just need a process and some good tools to help you get started.
That is why we created this monthly budget worksheet–to help you gain control of your money and deal with less chaos on your every day life.
You can get your own copy of this printable here.
Let’s walk through how to use this budget printable, so you can feel confident while making your budget!
The first step to utilizing this budget planner is to gather your income information. You have to know how much money you have coming in each month.
Write down each source of income, and how much you receive from each source.
Add up all the income and put the total in the total box.
Knowing how much you make/have coming in is going to help you make important decisions later on.
Next you can work on the debt payments section.
List and enter all your debts into the debt section.
You can decide if you just want to put the minimum amount toward each debt, or put more money at a specific debt.
If you are on a debt free journey, check out these tools to help you!
Make sure to add up all the debt payments you make and add that number to the debt total box.
The next section on the sheet is for savings.
What are you saving for? Emergency fund? Christmas? Vacation?
Whatever you want to save for, include that in the Savings section, along with how much you plan to put towards that goal.
Once you have added your savings, add up the total for each goal and include the total in the total box.
Now there are two large sections dedicated to your monthly bills, expenses and spending.
The middle section is for your fixed expenses or bills.
These are the expenses that you pay every single month, and the amount doesn’t change very much.
This will include things like housing, utilities, and transportation expenses.
Include all of your fixed expenses into this section, along with the amount due for each expense.
When you have finished, you can add up the total amount that goes towards fixed expenses and put that amount in the total box.
The last section is for your variable expenses or monthly spending.
This will cover basically everything else that you spend money on during the month.
Groceries, gas, personal spending, fun money, miscellaneous expenses.
You name it, and spend money on it, it needs to go on the sheet.
Enter all of your variable expenses, and the amount that gets spent, into the variable expenses section.
Add up the cost of all your variable expenses and put that into the total box.
Now that you have entered in all your information, you have essentially created your budget. YAY!
See, that wasn’t too bad.
There is one more step though.
At the bottom of the sheet you need to write down your total income, then your total spending (That means adding together the totals of ALL the other categories) and subtract spending from income.
The goal is to have a zero based budget, or a budget where income minus expenses equals $0.
So, if you are are $0, you did it!
If you are not at zero, that is where those important decisions come into play that I mentioned above.
If you have money leftover, you need to decide where it should go.
Maybe save more? Put more towards debt? Decide what your priority is and apply the money to that.
If you have a negative number here, then you need to go back through and look at your spending and saving.
Can you save a little less (NOT our favorite option, but understandable).
Can you find a way to cut some more from the expenses?
Or do you need a way to make some more money? Or some combination of all of them?
NO matter what you decide, now you have a better idea of where your money stands, and can start gaining better control of it overall.
Final Thoughts on Monthly Budget Worksheet
We know the importance of having a good, solid plan for your money–one that lessens the chaos of life, not makes it worse.
This monthly budget worksheet printable is designed to help you get control of your money so you can make good decisions and reach those money goals.
You can download it here!
Get your copy of the worksheet today!