50+ Sample Budget Sheets

What Are Budget Sheets?

A budget sheet refers to your official financial worksheet in determining, calculating, recording, or monitoring your expenses over a certain period. Just like a budget plan, you can depend on the budget sheet to organize finances and not head down to constant debts, or worse, bankruptcy. Thanks to budget sheets, you now have comprehensive tools to manage money in the smartest way possible.

Based on a report, the Americans’ debt reached $14.3 trillion and a $438 billion credit card debt to boot in March 2020; hence, the personal savings rate went down.

What Are the Parts of a Budget Sheet?

A budget sheet may contain lots of numbers of different expenses, may those be related to a regular paycheck, household budget, college tuition, or any other business. However, there are common elements observed from every budget sheet too. And they usually consist of the following:

Title or Purpose: A budget sheet starts with a title that is related to your purpose. For example, if you are budgeting for your personal expenses, then write ‘Personal Budget Sheet’ as your title. The title or purpose guides you on what details to add to the sheet.List of Expenses: A budget sheet should not be complete without the itemized list of expenses. Similar to an expense sheet, you enumerate all the budget amounts according to their categories. An example is to list all grocery expenses in one group, another category for personal savings, and so forth.Tables and Calculations: A budget sheet would also have calculations, charts, tables, and other factors that help you calculate or keep tabs on your expenses. You don’t just list the amount per budget anyway because you will likely add, subtract, and more in estimating or totaling.Date and Time: An average person would have daily, weekly, monthly, or annual expenses. So it is crucial to also associate the time, date, or schedule when you have payment dues, calculation of interest, etc. Hence, associate the date and time into your budget sheet.

How Do You Make a Budget Sheet?

People have different financial plans, goals, priorities, and expenses. Thus, a budget sheet isn’t a one-document-fits-all type of sheet. You have to personalize it. And with the sample budget sheets above, you can freely customize them afterward to meet your specific needs. And in creating the budget sheet properly, don’t forget to follow these steps:

Step 1: Review Your Financial Goals and Statements

Take a look back at your ongoing financial statements and assess your budget goals. Eventually, you’ll understand that your whole budget sheet is for school, a business project, or simply for personal use. Your financial statements are even your reference on what list of expenses must be written in the budget sheet.

Step 2: Complete the Parts of a Budget Sheet

Recall the important budget sheet parts down from the title to the date and time. You will need them to form a complete budget sheet for sure. That means you should have finalized your budget sheet’s purpose already, know what list of expenses to jot down, including the appropriate calculations, strategies, and schedules are.

Step 3: Arrange Your Details Carefully

While completing the budget sheet’s parts and adding as many details as you can, take a pause and check if all information was arranged well enough too. You have to be careful with the data inputted in the budget sheet or things might be hard to follow or worse, the records are inaccurate. You can always use graphic organizers and other strategies to organize the sheet anyway.

Step 4: Keep It User-Friendly

Last but not least, come up with a user-friendly budget sheet. Indeed, the listed sample budget sheets above promise you that. But how you customized the sheet might have lessened how easy to use the document is. In fact, you can always go for a simple budget sheet as long as the details are straightforward and easy to understand. More so, the document itself is convenient to use.

FAQs

What is the importance of a budget sheet?

A budget sheet is useful for reference and awareness purposes. There might be times you wonder why you only have a few savings left or if you doubt that your budget for retirement was really credited or not. Hence, refer to your budget sheet to monitor and manage all your different expenses.

What are the types of budgets?

There are four main types of budgets or budget methods that businesses are familiar with. These are the activity-based, incremental, value proposition, and zero-based budgets.

What is the 50-30-20 budget rule?

The 50-30-20 budget rule is a popular concept of budgeting where you are supposed to divide your income: 50% for needs, 30% for wants, and 20% for savings. And following that basic rule already lets you practice smart money management.

As natural beings, it is normal to have daily expenses, debts, and other financial-related concerns. But, don’t spend excessively. And that leads you back as to why monitoring and managing finances using a budget sheet is crucial. Budget sheets help you live life better financially rather than risking your future.