18 Free Printable Monthly Budget Templates

A personal monthly budget is a way of deciding the expenses according to your income. Printable monthly budget templates can be used for various purposes by almost all the people deciding to make a budget for their household, educational institute, company, hospitals, etc. Planning your monthly budget using the free templates does not mean that you will have to limit your spending, but the purpose of doing so is to allocate a set amount of income to fulfill a particular requirement.

When you plan your budget with the help of an excel monthly budget template, it becomes easy for you to observe the trend by which you are used to spending your income on different things. When your income and all the expenses are written together on a single page of a simple monthly budget template, you will better understand the things that require to be done first and then move towards those that are not required to be done immediately.

You will know about the flow of cash. It will help you make future decisions appropriately after understanding your affordability through the free monthly budget templates for planning your monthly budget.

You will need to plan your monthly budget with the help of printable templates if you are worried about getting short of the budget at the end of the month. So you can go with the option of planning your monthly budget with the help of excel templates for managing your resources efficiently. Your routine of keeping some money in your savings will also improve when all the details are present in the form of excel monthly budget templates. In this way, you will have the money for unseen circumstances as well that are not a part of your every month routine.

Free templates for your monthly budget will also allow your actual spending during the month to the planning you had done at the starting of your month. If it is according to your plan, then you have correctly followed the monthly budget. Still, if your spending has been more than what you had planned in the excel monthly budget template, then you will have to identify those areas where you overspent the money and should avoid doing so in the next month.

If you find out by analyzing the monthly budget from your simple template that your expenses are going more than your income, you will need to develop strategies for changing your spending habits. On the other hand, if the printable monthly budget template gives you good news of having some money as your savings, you can plan what to do with that money. For example, you can either keep it saved for your retirement days or use it in case of any emergency.

Monthly budget templates have broad categories over the internet, such as:

• Excel monthly budget templates.
• Free monthly budget templates.
• Printable monthly budget templates.
• Simple printable budget templates.

You can search over the internet and have free monthly budget templates for planning your monthly budget. You can select a printable monthly budget template based on your income and the type of planning you want to do for the upcoming month, it can be used by you manually, and you can also paste it on the door of your room, on the fridge or any other wall from where you can see it easily and regularly so that it can be followed appropriately.

On the other hand, you may also choose the Excel monthly budget template for using it with the help of your computer or laptop and getting it saved in your mobile phone as a reminder.

There are different reasons for which a monthly budget can be made. Some of the benefits of planning your budget with the help of simple monthly budget templates have been described below:

Helps you keep savings

When everything is being planned, you should also plan your savings with the help of the monthly budget being made with the help of an excel monthly budget template. It will help you in planning for achieving your long-term objectives. It will also save you from overspending on unnecessary stuff every other day because you will have an idea that what you will be able to do with your savings in the future time.

When you successfully save some amount of money from your monthly budget by following the one made with the help of a free monthly budget template, you will get a sense of motivation to keep going and follow the same routine of saving money. You are doing this all because you want to get something bigger so the small and little stuff will not bother you, and you will not restrict yourself from doing so.

Keeps you from wasting money

Some people spend money on different things aimlessly, so you need to understand the difference between the essential things required in your daily life and those things which are just a cause of your satisfaction about being up to date with the new world. The feeling of having everything new launched in the market will put you in a lot of trouble due to mismanagement of the expenses.

For this purpose, you should use printable monthly budget templates for planning your monthly budget better because when you have a pre-made plan, you will try to follow it. Eventually, you will become habitual of spending your money sensibly. In this way, you will have a clear image of different sections in which your income is required to be spent.

Helps you lead a happier retirement

The habit of saving money has long-term benefits for you. It will also help you spend your retirement days appropriately without feeling the need to borrow money from anyone else. Of course, spending money sensibly is not the only thing required, but you should also plan to have a suitable amount of savings for the days of retirement. This purpose can be fulfilled by using the free monthly budget templates to plan everything appropriately.

The sacrifices you make in the present will give you a fruitful result in the future, and you will also have a sense of satisfaction at the later time when you will be able to use your savings according to your wish.

Prepares you for emergencies

There can be days when you or any of your family members and friend will need money in an emergency, and then you can be there to provide them with the help they want. All the things in life do not happen according to your plans, so you should be prepared for emergencies as these are also a natural part of everyone’s life. In this regard, the simple monthly budget template can help you a lot. You can even specify a column for “emergency funds,” according to which you will have to keep some money aside for unexpected circumstances.

If an appropriate amount of funds is available at your hand, then the situation will also not get worsen. A large part of your income should not be specified for this reason. Instead, it should be built within some months when a specific amount of money will be added each month.

Eliminates your bad spending habits

When everything is done by following the Excel monthly budget template, you will be able to identify those habits against your planning. Once those bad habits get identified, you will surely try to improve those habits for remaining focused regarding the plans made in your printable monthly budget template.

In this way, you will also recognize those things that are of least importance and do not require the money to be spent on them regularly. There will be some areas that cannot improve even after trying so much, and then you will have to make some changes to your simple monthly budget template.

Keeps you well-planned

A printable monthly budget template will keep you from all the worries regarding your budget management. You will not have to worry about paying bills when you will have a pre-made plan already in your hand. It is because you have controlled and specified how you will be spending your income in the whole month. So it would help if you tried to specify the income for those things on a priority basis which is of significant importance for your daily routine life.

In this post, we are going to help you get things started, setting up an impeccable household budget. Prepared? Then check it out!

Define your goal

Have you ever tried to organize your finances and did not continue? Have you even started making a financial spreadsheet but left it aside after a few days? Know that having clear goals makes all the difference in your motivation to organize and keep track of your finances.

With well-defined goals, it is easier to always keep in mind why frequent monitoring of your accounts and actually do that.

So, stop to think: what are your short-term goals? Pay off debt? Saving for a trip? Saving to buy a car or a motorcycle or to renovate the house? Make a good reservation for the arrival of a baby? And your medium and long-term goals? Saving to buy a home? Invest in children’s education? Save money for retirement?

If your monthly energy bill is usually 50 dollars, you can set a goal to reduce it to 40 dollars, adopting some best consumption practices, for example. If spending on weekend getaways is consuming your budget, you can choose to go to cheaper places or reduce the frequency.

Tip: Define your goals and use them to stay motivated in your savings goals.

Analyze your income

What are your sources of income? Do you have a monthly salary? Do you receive benefits such as unemployment insurance, alimony, or retirement? Do you receive rental property (s)? Do you have other sources of income (such as beaks or freelancers)? Did you have any recent sales gains?

Writing down all your earnings and analyzing the frequency of your receipts is the first step in organizing your budget spreadsheet.

Organize your expenses

The next step is to write down all your expenses. And the idea here is not to separate them by types (expenses with transportation, health, education, etc.). But group them according to the time of payment of each one, in order to have better control of their accounts. See how simple it is:

• Expenses at source – taxes and direct payroll discounts, such as business health plans, transportation vouchers, etc .;
• Committed expenses – fixed monthly accounts and installments already assumed; ex .: water, electricity, school fees, car payment, gym, etc .;
• Daily expenses – daily food, fuel, pharmacy, salon, café, bar, restaurant, nightclub, cinema, shopping for clothes and electronics, car review, tire change, etc .;
• Atypical expenses – unplanned and/or emergency expenses, such as medicines, claims, etc.

According to financial experts, in order to have balance in the accounts, the ideal is that your expenses already committed monthly do not exceed 60% of your net income. Thus, it is possible to have a percentage to spare for day-to-day expenses and for possible atypical expenses that may arise.

In addition, by planning all your expenses, you can have a better idea of ​​where you can save. After all, you need to set aside some money to invest in your goals.

Project your cash flow

Cash flow is nothing more than the control of monthly inflows and outflows, serving as a thermometer to know how much your bank account is going. Based on fixed and variable expenses, you can predict how much you will spend bi-weekly, as well as how much money you have available to pay bills.

If it is still not possible to save, you will know at least when it will be possible to start doing so, as the cash flow signals surpluses in the budget. From there, you can think about the dreams to realize and the respective planning for that!

Calculate your weekly budget

Having recorded and analyzed your income and expenses, you can now begin to better plan your budget in order to achieve your goals. To do this, start by doing a simple calculation:

• Consider your net income (your income fewer expenses at source):

Ex .:  $ 5,000 / month

• Subtract your committed expenses from it:

Ex .:  $ 5,000 – $ 3,000 = $ 2,000

• Set aside a percentage to invest in your goals:

Ex .:  $ 2,000 – $ 500 (savings) =  $ 1,500

• Now, divide what’s left by the weeks of the month:

Ex .:  $ 1,500 ÷ 4 =  $ 375

This final result shows how much you have per week for day-to-day and atypical expenses. If you prefer to have even more control, you can divide this result by 7 to find out how much you can spend, on average, daily. Planning your finances like this can be a lot easier than thinking about them just once a month.

Go for control

The financial lack of control happens precisely because the tendency is to think that it is possible to keep everything organized only in memory. However, do a quick exercise now: review the past week and try to think about how you spent your money. More difficult than I imagined, isn’t it? So the best thing to do is to choose a control method.

You can make a manual control, in a notebook even, noting all your daily expenses. The only problem, in this case, is that relying on memory and committing to writing everything down every day can be a little risky. After all, you certainly have other things to do. So how to solve it?

A very viable alternative is to use spreadsheets to record income and expenses. With them, you can create formulas and obtain balances, sums, and other results that will help you more easily identify your expenses, through consumption charts, for example.

Following are free templates for you that are editable and can be customized as per need:

Starting to do any planning is not easy, so it is the case with making a simple monthly budget template. But there are many ways by which you can make your excel monthly budget template effective by considering some crucial aspects. So some of the essential things that should be kept in mind while making the simple monthly budget template have been explained below:

Eliminate the debts

The first and most important thing you should do is to pay off your debts and loans by specifying a certain amount of your income, which will only be used to get rid of all the debts. Adopting this strategy will help you greatly in the long term when you are free of any pressure and load on your mind regarding unpaid debts. Of course, to fulfill this purpose, you might have to reduce the spending for the monthly budget of your outings in the printable monthly budget template, but once the debts are eliminated, you will be free to use this money as you wish.

Zero-based budgeting

This strategy can be beneficial while planning your monthly budget with the help of simple monthly budget templates. According to this method, you will write down the total income and expenses in a single space. Then you will subtract the expenses from your total income until the remaining value becomes zero. Of course, it does not mean that you have spent all your monthly income, but a certain amount of money has been specified for the savings or investments and has been subtracted from the total amount of income. 

Have a flexible budget

There can be room for adjustments in the monthly budget plan by making some changes in the printable template according to the persisting situations at a particular time. So it would help if you tried to plan everything so that they can be adjusted in case of any unanticipated event or emergency. Moreover, it will help you not to borrow money from any other person as a debt amount that you will have to pay back eventually and will not be a good thing for your free monthly budget template.

Plan for the change

The trend of spending money cannot remain constant for all the months. In some months, you will have to spend more income on fulfilling specific tasks, and on the other hand, there will be such months when you will need to spend an even lesser amount of money, as you mentioned in the free monthly budget template. So you should be ready for such changing situations.

You can plan for such events that do not happen every month but are a natural part of your life, and then you should make a yearly budget for that purpose and save some amount of money every month for fulfilling those things. You will have to develop this strategy thoughtfully to make it work effectively.

Set financial goals 

Setting a goal and purpose with the help of an excel monthly budget template is essential for you because it makes you stay focused on achieving that goal and fulfilling your purpose. Your goals should be based on the reality that can be accomplished in real-time. When the small goals are successfully achieved, you will get a sense of motivation for continuing the process of setting goals and achieving them by setting effective financial plans. Of course, you will have to remain disciplined and patient while all this process continues to improve your financial conditions in the longer run.