A family budget is necessary to manage finances. A zero based approach starts with necessities and prioritizes every dollar of planned spending. The objective is to manage your limited resources. A spreadsheet is an efficient method of working on the details and watching the bottom line calculation. Part of the planning objective is to cut out optional spending.
- Monthly Cash Flow Plan is based on a paper form from Financial Peace University (Dave Ramsey). Because the spreadsheet mimics the paper form, it is organized across 3 pages which isn't very convenient.
- Enemy of Debt Deluxe Budget is a working model for budget and spending, calculating remaining amounts.
- Quickie Budget from Chuvala is another option that incorporates formulas for frequency per year and calculates amount per month and week.
Solution?
None of these spreadsheets are ideal. An appropriate solution might be to revise the Monthly Cash Flow Plan into a single worksheet with categories in descending order of importance / priority. For example:
- + Monthly or weekly take home income is at the top.
- - Expenses come below and are deducted from the take home income.
- Food - wholesome and filling, not gourmet and take-out
- Housing - including heat and lights
- Transportation - think in terms of getting to a job, used Honda Civic rather than new BMW
- Medical / Health
- ... at some point savings, charitable contributions, and other long term necessities must also be included, but this budget assumes a desperate short-term crisis situation that has to be worked through.
- ... and so on with lower and lower priorities until the income runs out
- $0 is the bottom line!
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No matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little step toward solution. Do something.
George F. Nordenholt
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