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Need a Budget? Google Can Help

Posted by Sun on July 24, 2008
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I don’t budget. Not that it’s bad or useless or anything, but because I don’t think it’s necessary for me. If the purpose of budgeting is to have spending under control and live below my means, then I am there already. Sure budgeting can help, but I don’t know how much improvement I can get in my case.

Nonetheless, budget is considered as one of center pieces of personal finance planning and people, experts and ordinary people alike, have argued the importance of having a budget. If you want to plan your spending and do a monthly budget, but don’t know where to start, then the recently published Google personal monthly budget template can give you a help.

Google personal monthly budget template

The Google budget template is a spreadsheet from Google Doc that records your monthly incomes (wages, interests, dividends, etc) and expenses, which include

  • Home expenses
  • Transportation
  • Health
  • Charity
  • Subscriptions
  • Daily Living
  • Entertainments
  • Savings
  • Obligations (loans, taxes, etc.)
  • Miscellaneous

Each item has a Projected field and a Actual field and the template can calculate the difference between the two. At the end, the sum of income differences and the sum of expense differences are compared and you will get an overall number that tells you whether you really live below your means in the month :) This is a very simple tool that covers most expenses we could have. Since budgeting is all about planning and tracking expenses, you don’t really need any fancy tools such as Quicken or Money. A spreadsheet, in my opinion, is good enough.

To use this template online, go to Google Doc, then select Spreadsheets tab from the top menu and click Personal Finance link on the left. You will need to scroll down a little bit to find the monthly budget spreadsheet. Or you can also download the template and use it offline in Excel.

Of course, Google Doc isn’t the only place you can find free budgeting tools. Another good source is SourceForge. You can find a lot of budgeting tools that are free to download.

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9 Comments
September 1, 2008

I need to find out about low budget flights from Kochi to Delhi on the 1)11/12of Sept 2008 and bk to Kochi on the 14/15 of Sept2)18/19 Sept 2008 to Delhi form Kochi and back to Kochi on 21/ 22 Sept…thank you, Rina

Posted by Rina Varghese
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