Basic Budgeting

A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went

I started my first job after college in July of 2019. Time flew by fast and money flew by even faster. My parents had given me a small amount to start with and adjust to the independent life that I now have. Yet I had no idea where that had all gone. Starting out your life requires many purchases. From buying furniture to buying kitchen appliances to work attire. Although some of these are one time purchases, it’s easy to lose track of where the money is going.

Fast forward a couple of months, I realized I was living paycheck to paycheck when I really didn't need to be. I had calculated all expenses before I accepted my job offer and knew that I should be able to afford a comfortable lifestyle with what I was earning. Yet I felt anxious every time I had to make a purchase. In November of 2019, I decided to finally start budgeting. Except it was challenging. I felt like no template I found suited my needs. I had no idea how to categorize my spendings. And the bank statements certainly did not help. Therefore, I started my own sheet with some basic categories to fit my lifestyle.

My income categories consisted of:

• Paycheck

• Savings

• Bonus

My spending categories consisted of:

• Rent/Utilities

• Food

• Transportation

• Health/Medical

• Insurance

• Entertainment

• Shopping/Gifts

I then proceeded to make a sheet to easily access and track each individual purchase. I created a monthly editable tab in Google Excel and a monthly summary tab to go along with it. I added these monthly expenses and sources of income in an annual tab on the same sheet. And made one final summary page to keep track of the overall spendings and earnings per month and per year. I realize that budgeting will be different for everyone based on the individual lifestyles. But I'll share my sheet with you. I've created columns and added formulas for easy addition/subtraction of categories. All you’ll have to do is add a purchase into the left column and all the other sheets will update automatically. My goal is to give you a resource to get started!

Remember that budgeting is not easy. It can get very meticulous. Just know that you have to start somewhere. And what better time is there than to start now?