I choose the weekly version because we are paid weekly but they have bi-weekly, monthly, annual, etc. Look over them and see which template works the best for you. Once you have decided and downloaded into your Excel program then it's time to figure out how to personalize it to your situation. I added rows and renamed them to suit my family.
Now I had my statements and I had my spreadsheet but now what? I had no clue how to work with Excel. So I did what I knew how to do at first... I added dates and then changed the name of rows.
To refer back to yesterday's post about going backwards I started with June 2010 because then I could sum up different categories and get a true read of what we have been spending and where we spent it. So I began the process of logging in information. I named the categories such as Groceries and Pets, Health/Hygiene, Eating Out, etc. Then I sub-categorized. Under Groceries I sub-categorized by the different stores I shop. Under Dining Out I sub-categorized using rows titled Fast-Food, Dine-In, Chinese Take-Out, Deli, Coffee,
etc. Yours might not have as many categories because eating out is my weakness.
I had spent a lot of time on the Category/Sub-category step. But it really helped me feel confident about using Excel.
Once I was happy that all my expense categories were covered I began the process of logging in each tranaction using my bank statements using The 1st day of June and going to the following payday which happens to be on Tuesdays. I needed to add more categories and sub-category expense rows as I ran across expenses I forgot about. Another thing that I found helpful was I put the MUST PAYS or the revolving bills such as mortgage, power, water, gas, loans, insurance, etc. listed first and highlighted a color.
Two days later I was ready to begin SUMing up rows and columns! Thank goodness for Google because a quick search on "How to add a row in MS Excel" rendered me excellent click-by-click instructions. Take my word for it.. soon I was clicking and dragging and summing up not only columns and rows, but numbers from different rows and columns and even different sheets to boot! I haven't been that proud of myself since I tackled an apple pie from scratch!
This post is getting too long. I will save you the details of how I did the spreadsheet. One day if anyone actually reads this and wants the info I can add it. Just comment or email me and I will help if I can. But the point of this post is to let you know that you can create a spreadsheet even without a working knowledge of Excel or any math skills! The hard part is convincing your family to live on a budget and then to actually do it.
Next post .. WOW... we spent how much at McDonald"s?
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