Benefits of Using a Budgeting Worksheet
Creating a budgeting worksheet is not a difficult task. In fact, you can easily get started with setting up one whether you are familiar or not with using spreadsheets. The great thing about a budgeting worksheet is it displays all your financial information in a clear format that you can review quickly.
It is also very easy to edit so you can make quick changes without messy erasures or the need to re-do the entire page, which will be the case if you are using paper. Moreover, you can keep a lifetime copy of your budgeting worksheet for every month and year in your hard drive or in another storage device so you have a record of your finances.
Certainly, there are many spreadsheet programs available today. But for the novice, the commonly used Microsoft Excel should be enough to do the job. Besides, a simple budgeting worksheet is all you really need to understand and manage your finances better. Any program will do as long as you find it easy to use because the main purpose of creating a budgeting worksheet with your computer is to make the task of budgeting and calculating simpler.
If writing a budgeting worksheet on paper is the most effective method for you, then by all means stick with it. However, if you try just a simple program like Excel you will find that the process, particularly, the calculations, are much easier - in fact, just by creating simple formulas, you can let the computer do the math for you.
There are many ways of using a budgeting worksheet aside from budgeting for your personal or household finances. You can also use it budgeting for travel vacations or even your wedding. So in the case of travel budgeting worksheet, instead of having an income and expense field like what you would have in a personal budget, you would create categories like document fees, clothing, personal items, air fare, hotel accommodation, food, car rental, and the likes. In a wedding budgeting worksheet, for example, you would have a different set of categories like venue rental, catering services, flowers, wedding stylist, stationary, favors and gifts and etcetera.
As you can see, a budgeting worksheet is as simple as a list of what you expect to spend on with the amount of money you have. It allows you to plan your spending accordingly and check whether you are allotting just the right amount for each expense area. It helps you ensure that your budget goes to the most important things first and prevents you from overspending.
