Your Practical Budgeting Worksheet
Read this post to learn about your interaction with your Personal Finance Guide on budgeting and to hear about an interactive budgeting worksheet tool we have developed to make your life easier. I know- budgeting worksheets sound painful- but with the use of “The bÜdg”, getting your expenses in order can be easy as pie!
We all remember the days of chores and allowance, where taking out the trash and washing the dishes earned you the equivalency of below minimum wage, but, hey, we were kids, and money was what we needed to buy the hot new item that month, whether it be POGS with your new 8-Ball Slammer to beat the kid down the street or Crazy Bones or those loveable creatures called Beanie Babies. As children, the last notion in your head was budgeting; that money was burning a hole in your pocket faster than Usain Bolt can run the 100-meter dash, and any chance you had to get to the mall was the last you saw of it. Imagine how much money you could have right now if you saved most of your allowances and birthday checks; heck, for all we know, we could be “multi-thousandaires” before stepping foot into the “real world”.
But unfortunately, we are in the real world now. So long POGS and Beanie Babies, and hello student loans, credit cards, and many other expenses. Budgeting is now a vocabulary word we need to start using and living by in order to make it in this tough economy.
A Different Approach to Budgeting Worksheets
So what to do? What to do? Don’t fret; budgeting is all about organization and making sure you understand where your money is coming in versus going out. Thinking through all the pieces of a budget can be difficult without the right help and guidance. With financialfootprint financial solutions, we start by putting you in touch with a personal finance expert who can help you start thinking through where to start with your budget, student finances, and other budgeting “how-to” for all young adults. What categories to think about? What other young adults are spending their moolah on? We then give you our very own budgeting worksheet, nicknamed The bÜdg, to help you starting building on your own. Our budgeting worksheet helps you organize your budget into 3 buckets:
- Income and savings
- Essential expenses (aka things I have to have to survive)
- Optional expenses (things I want to have but necessarily need)
Inputting into the budgeting worksheet can be as quick as you want or as comprehensive as you need. It’s totally up to you. We leave it up to you to organize categories into buckets that make sense for your life.
But inputs are only so important without an easy to understand output page. Our budgeting worksheet breaks down your budget through a series of easy-to-follow graphs. We also take a look at things from a both a monthly and year-long standpoint, so we have you covered for the short-term and long-term.
Our budget worksheet, The bÜdg is one of many applications we are designing to complement our personal finance guides providing you the financial education to help you better manage your finances.
Check back here for other budgeting worksheet tidbits and budgeting testimonials from our members to give you an idea about how we can help you!
Comment from a Budgeting Worksheet (“The bÜdg”) User
“One of the biggest problems I am trying to figure out revolves around how to allocate my surplus income between short and long-run savings. I was a little bit nervous going into the conversation because I was not sure what to expect, but my guide was very friendly and I was at ease almost as soon as we started talking. I was really impressed that he was able to come up with a basic budget plan, personalized for my income and expenses, based on a twenty minute conversation.” - Ryann, Providence, RI