Personal Monthly Budget

The purpose of this budget spreadsheet is to compare your actual budget to your actual monthly income and expenditure. You would need to create a budget goal by recording the desired amounts into a "Budget" column, which you should stick to and prevent from spending more than this amounts. At the end of the month you record the amounts of what you really spent throughout the month into the "Actuals" column.

To use this template, simply enter your amount figures into the cells of the "Budget" and the "Actuals" columns. The difference between your budget and your actual expenses is calculated in the "Difference" column which uses accounting format that puts the negative value in parenthesis and also highlights cell in red (meaning bad), when all positive values highlight cells in green color (meaning good). So when you spend less than you have budgeted for, the value in the Difference column will be green or red that stands out as warning when you overspent.

The Monthly Budget Totals table, that also includes Starting Balance, which should be entered unless of course you begin a new month with no balance at all. Formulas for calculating NET amount set in a way that calculates the sum of total income and the starting balance less total Monthly Expenses, so that if the NET value is negative, that means you've overspent your monthly budget.

Adding New Budget Categories: Might be a little difficult, but surely doable. You'll need to be very cautious when adding or removing categories and always check the formulas used to calculate total for each category to avoid any imperfections in calculations. Adding, removing or amending items within categories is much simpler and can be achieved by inserting additional rows, but again you should always check your formulas.