*New* Budget Sheet

I've been having a crazy good time putting together a new budget sheet for 2014...Crazy, right? (Like I said!)

 

A few years ago I had Chris finish a money tracker spread sheet I had started putting together, (Yes! I suck at Excel and ended up needing him to come save me because he rocks with it...blah, blah, blah.) Every year we tweak it just a bit, but I've finally stepped out of denial... 

 

The money tracker sheet worked very well to let us know WHERE all our money was going, but it didn't hold us accountable for anything. It simply tells me that we spent way too much $$ eating out, and we even included a little column that breaks each row into a monthly average (which I sometimes I like to pretend is our running total to make me feel better.)

 

Now things are different. We have Katelyn, and she has now hit the stage were we have to consciously cook a little more food (and buy a little more), her age requires her own ticket for just about everything, and then there is this little thing called tuition for both the present and the future. 

 

So, I'm excited to have finally finished a spread sheet that lists all our expenditures with a monthly budget. (Things like "Vacation-Travel" "Postage" "Lawn Care" are all included.)  As we enter in each months spending I can see our ups and our downs on a graph for each item. That is followed by our running total, which is then subtracted from our yearly budget, and then our overage/underage for each item is clearly black or red.

 

At the end of the each months column is the $ amount we should be spending, and that tells me where we are at as a whole for the month. (Although, I'm not going to be as concerned with this, because we may go to one concert/theater event the entire year. The budget we set breaks down to $16/month, so as long as we stay below $192/year we're good in the grand scheme of things.)

 

But I didn't stop there...No, sir. We have a savings section. This section has our money saving goals. This includes our general savings and the 52 week challenge (hopefully to be donated about this time next year.)

 

That's the run down...and now that it is finished I can't wait for January to get here so I can start filling it all in...that's not really crazy...it's more sad, I know. But, if you have any suggestions on changing something with it, let me know.