Start Budgeting with a Personal Budget Template
Was one of your 2010 New Year resolutions to finally sit down and create your personal budget? Well, if it was, I have just the tool to get you started – your very own, personal budget template!
Personal Budget Template - Advantages
Why bother calculating everything with your little calculator, or even by hand. Spread out, bring out all your bank and credit card statements and all your cash receipts, get comfortable in front of your computer and put Excel to work for you.
This personal budget template is an outgrowth of what I have been using for years. A template like this helps me in several ways. The first and most obvious one is that it adds things up for me error free. Let’s not minimize this – it can be a life saver.
Another thing it does is helps me structure my thoughts and organize my paperwork along the categories laid out in the template. Believe it or not, without it, I could very well completely forget about a large part of my life. And even though I am an accountant, I use this tool as much as anyone else. It’s amazing how much transparency you gain when you put things in front of you on paper.
Once you start using it, save it under different names - for example: Joe personal budget Jan 2010. That way you will have a separate file for every version of your budget to come back to, if you choose to.
Why People Don’t Budget
Many people avoid personal budgeting for a couple of reasons. First of all, we are all busy and making a personal budget takes time. Unless we realize how valuable it is to us, we won’t be motivated to do it.
Another reason is that people may think they don’t know how to do it. Nothing could be simpler! And you don’t have to do it perfectly. No one will be grading you on it. You will be the one to benefit from it the most! Even if you manage to get only a part of your expenses under control, you will be so much better off than if you never started it at all.
Once you do it once, it will get easier and easier. Just keep your personal budget template handy, keep adding your data to it and look at your budget from time to time. It will need updating and revising. And one day, before you even notice, budgeting will become an integral part of your life. And you will see the results in your bank account!
