My budget isn’t so much a budget as a detailed spreadsheet of where the money from each paycheck is going to go. When you think about it, that’s what a traditional budget is. You earmark $50 for this, $100 for that, etc. The way I do my budget is a little bit more detailed than that. It, of course, only makes sense if you’re doing envelope budgeting.
I do the spreadsheet for my budget by year. My budgeting system assumes that you have a basic budget put together already. You already know where your money needs to go on a basic level each month. The name of every category that I want to budget for goes on the left hand column. Next to that, I put the amount I’d like to budget for each month in that category.
Across the top of every column, I put the date of every single paycheck that we’ll get that year. I even include columns for our tax refund (if we’re lucky enough to get one) and any bonus’. One way in which Google Calendars can once again come in handy is to create a calendar just for your paychecks (especially if you’re a 2 income home and get paid on different days). It makes it a bit faster if you have a reference to help with the dates.
I’ve created a sample template in Google Docs so you can see what I’m talking about.
I started to do my budget this way once I realized that my husband and I had different pay schedules. He’s on a twice a month and I’m every 2 weeks. Money comes in at such strange times and I needed to make sure I was going to have the money in the bank (and envelope) for each bill at the correct time.
I hope this helps folks understand how I get things organized. It’s pretty labor intensive to get going, but once it’s in place there’s little to do.
Good luck and feel free to leave question in the comments.