I have updated this post to better provide help to those wanting to get going on their Dave Ramsey budget.
For those of you who are just to impatient to read through the posts you can download my spreadsheet from here…
Get the Spreadsheet From Here
Here are some more posts about the Budget Spreadsheet
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My original post of Dave’s spreadsheet can be found over here.
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After using the spreadsheet for a year, I made some updates with a detailed explication of all of the tabs which can be read here.
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I also have a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about the spreadsheet here.
I hope you enjoy the spreadsheet and that it helps you on your journey to becoming DEBT FREE!
UPDATE: Comments on this post are closed. If you want to leave a comment, please do so from the FAQ page.
–Chris Hoffman
Tags: Budget, Dave Ramsey, Excel, Finances, FPU
CS193P - Cocoa Programming | Announcements.
Starting to do some iPhone / iPod touch development. If anyone is interested I highly recommend the iTunes U class on iPhone development from Stanford University.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php
First off I would like to thank everyone for the kind words. I’m very happy that you have found my spreadsheet to be helpful on your journey to becoming debt free.
As promised, here is a list of Frequently Asked Questions and my best attempt to answer them.
For questions where the answer is… “NO”, and where I have no intention to make the requested changes, I have tried to at least give you an explication as to why I have chosen to have things work the way they do.
Q1) I get paid every week and need to be able to account for months that have 5 paydays.
A) I have updated the spreadsheet to now track 5 weeks per month. All you have to do is re download the spreadsheet from the link at the top of the page.
Q2) Is there a column next to each month’s outgoings showing that the item has been paid?
A) No. {Explanation Coming}
Q3) How to I enter cents without rounding to the nearest dollar?
A) This must be a question from a Die Hard Nerd. J I was once like you so don’t be offended. I don’t recommend that you do this for a few reasons.
· Having the cents show in the cells add to the width of the sheet and adds a lot of extra visible ‘Noise’ to the sheet
· Most categories do not need them, for example most people are not going to put down $299.57 for groceries. I know what you are thinking, yea but what about all of those utilities; I don’t set the amount for those. In those instances I just round everything up to the nearest Dollar (Pound, Euro, etc). This just leaves a few extra cents per category in my checking account each payday. It still works out that I have spent everything on paper before the month begins, which is the point of doing the Allocated Spending Plan.
· If you still want to track to the nearest cents you can find out how here from Microsoft.
Q4) Do you know where a good pay down debt excel spreadsheet can be found?
A) Vertex42 has a very good debt snowball spreadsheet that you can download from here.
Q5) Can you add a page that rolls the debt section into the debt snowball?
A) No, because the debt snowball could really be its own spreadsheet. In fact you should download the debt snowball excel file from the question #4. Once you are out of debt, you will no longer need the debt snowball spreadsheet but can continue to use the Allocated Spending Plan spreadsheet. Plus I want to keep this as close to Dave’s paper form as possible.
Q6) Is there a way that we can change the names on the debit section? I would like to make it as personal as possible!
A) You can change the names all you want. All of the calculations are down based on the Cell references (A1, B7, etc). You will need to do it for every tab though. Beware: If you move the rows and columns around thought, you could run the risk of messing up the calculations.
Q7) I am having trouble saving it. It keeps saying its read only.
A) Try going to the File menu and selecting Save As..
Q8) Can you add a column to track actual expenses (vs.. planned).
A) No. For a few reasons… I don’t think of the Allocated Spending plan as a “What we would LIKE to do”, but more of a contact of “This is what we are GOING TO DO”. I will elaborate a bit.
- For categories such as mortgage, utilities, insurance payments and other standard bills, the Allocated amount is always the same as the actual amount.
- For categories where we use envelopes such as groceries, gas, entertainment, etc. When the envelopes are empty, we ‘Stop Spending Money’, again actual = planned. There have been times when we have parked one car for a day or two, while we used the car that ‘Still had gas in the tank’. There were a few paychecks where we did not give ourselves enough food money. There were a couple of days near the end when we were ‘Cleaning’ out the fridge, but we did not cheat. There have been some rare cases when we ran out of money in one envelope and had to borrow from another envelope. In these cases, we would have an emergency budget committee meeting where we were both aware of the borrowing and in agreement. This has improved our communication and helps us plan the next paycheck better, so we don’t have to borrow from other envelopes.
- This leaves us with the only other situation where we have extra money left over (actual was less than planned) in an envelope. I touch on this in the next question.
- Plus I want to keep this as close to Dave’s paper form as possible.
Q9) What do you do with the money left over that you don’t spend from your budget? For example, we didn’t buy clothing last month…and have that budget item left. Does it go to savings, another category if we went over, or carry over to the next month?
A) This is a great question. We have gotten this question in both of the FPU classes we have coordinated. The best way I know how to answer this is to tell you how we have handled this situation, and the answer is… “It Depends!” We will look at the category and talk about why we still have money left. A few examples are….
- If its ‘Clothes’, as in the example, we will just keep the money in the envelope, and still add to it next paycheck. We do this with clothing because in that specific category we tried to figure out how much we were going to spend a year on the family and then divided that number by 26 and putting that number in the clothes envelope. We know that we are not going to buy clothes every paycheck, but when we do, we use only the cash in the envelope and don’t go over.
- If its ‘Gas’ we will talk (there’s that communication again) and try to figure out why we are under and if we need to adjust the amount for the next pay period. Sometimes it’s because my wife did not drive as much (not driving the kids to school during spring break) but will be driving the normal amount in the upcoming paycheck. In that case we keep the budget amount the same and just apply the ‘extra’ amount to the next pay period. Sometimes we are under because the price of gas (or whatever) went down and we can lower the amount we need for the next paycheck. In this case I will lower the budgeted amount and take into account the money left in the envelope that will get used. For example if we need $200 for gas (this $200 represents the new lower amount) and we still have $30 left in the envelope, I will put $170 in the gas column. I just need to make sure I bump that back up to $200 on the next paycheck because that is the amount we are actually spending.
Q10) Where I have always struggled is the best way to record actual monthly expenditures. Do you just replace the budgeted amount with the actual during the month?
A) I only spend the amounts that I put on the spreadsheet. If you stick with what you budget, you will not have to go back and fill in the actual amount. In the event that adjustments are needed, as explained in some of the questions above. I adjust going forward, sometimes using the left over money in the envelopes sometimes bumping up the amounts for a category. By filling out the Allocated Spending plan before each paycheck we are very quickly able to adjust the amount budgeted to closely match what we are actually going to spend.
Q11) When I download the spreadsheet, it will not print. Do you have any suggestions?
Q12) Is this just an allocation sheet or is there a place/way to write in the amount you’ve budgeted for AND the amount you actually spend on a particular line item during the month?
A) This is just the Allocation Sheet. See Also Q8 and Q10
Q13) In the 3rd column of your original spreadsheet, it just shows #### in the columns when I enter my numbers. How do I change that?
A) This happens when the values in the cells are wider than the column. Check out this page to see how to adjust the column widths.
Q14) Any chance you can post your sheets for use with Apple Numbers???
A) I’m working on this. I don’t currently have a copy of Numbers but would be happy to put out a Numbers version if someone were to donate a copy of Numbers to me.
Q15) Is there one for the monthly cash flow plan? I can’t find it.
A) No, this is just the Allocated Spending Plan.
Q16) Thanks for your spreadsheet. Does it work in MS 2008 for Mac with the Visual Basic macros disabled (Mac 08 can’t use the Visual Macros)?
A) Yes it does work with MS 2008 for the Mac, but the “Copy from last month” button will not work. You will have to enter each month in by hand.
Tags: Budget
My wife and I recently completed Dave Ramsey’s 13 week Financial Peace University course.
In our 14 years of marriage, this was the first time that we have successfully created a budget and stuck to it. I think the reasons for all the past failures stem from the fact that we would try to create 1 budget that we would try to live on every single month. That worked fine until life smacked us around, throwing the budget completely out of whack.
The difference with Dave’s plan is that we create a new budget every single month. We spend our paychecks on paper BEFORE we actually get them. Dave’s budget is what he calls a ZERO based budget, which means at the top of the budget form you put your income and then you start Allocating money to your categories until you have allocated every dollar, and are left with ZERO at the bottom of the form.
I would highly recommend to anyone that wanted to get on a budget to use this method, as it is the only one that has ever worked for us.
You can download Dave’s Paper based budget form here… <GET DAVE’S BUDGET FORM>
The only problem I have had with using the paper form is that it can take some time doing the “Corrections” all the way down the form when I found out I had run out of money before I ran out of things to pay. In this scenario you have to make some adjustments to amounts higher up in the form and that would require that you redo all of the calculations. This can be time consuming.
So being the nerd that I am (Dave’s word, there are nerds and free spirits, take the class and you will understand) I have created an Excel Spreadsheet that duplicates Dave’s form exactly (I did not want to change anything) but allows me to make changes to my allocations quickly.
CAUTION:
Please, Please, Please Use Dave’s paper based form for at least one month (two pay periods) before using my spreadsheet. I say this because I am a deep believer in what Dave says about finances being 80% behavior and 20% knowledge. You have to change your behavior about money, and if you think that just by using some fancy spreadsheet you will FIX your money problems you will have missed boat. In Fact please take Dave’s FPU class before using this spreadsheet and you will get even more benefit from it.
CAUTION:
You can Download the spreadsheet from here
I have password protected the worksheet to prevent me from making any accidental changes. If you would like to change the worksheet you will first need to unprotect it. The password is “pass”
–Chris
UPDATE: Comments on this post are closed. If you want to leave a comment, please do so from the FAQ page.
Tags: Budget, Dave Ramsey, Finances, FPU
[code lang="vb"]
Dim range1 As String ''Income
Dim range2 As String ''Charity
Dim range3 As String ''Saving
Dim range4 As String ''Housing
Dim range5 As String ''Util
Dim range6 As String ''Food
Dim range7 As String ''Transportation
Dim range8 As String ''Clothing
Dim range9 As String ''Medical
Dim range10 As String ''Personal
Dim range11 As String ''Entertainment
Dim range12 As String ''Debt
Private Sub SetupVars()
range1 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$6" ''Income
range2 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$8" ''Charity
range3 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$11:$<WEEK>$13" ''Saving
range4 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$16:$<WEEK>$23" ''Housing
range5 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$26:$<WEEK>$33" ''Util
range6 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$36:$<WEEK>$37" ''Food
range7 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$40:$<WEEK>$46" ''Transportation
range8 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$49:$<WEEK>$51" ''Clothing
range9 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$54:$<WEEK>$59" ''Medical
range10 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$62:$<WEEK>$79" ''Personal
range11 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$82:$<WEEK>$83" ''Entertainment
range12 = "<MONTH>!$<WEEK>$86:$<WEEK>$105" ''Debt
End Sub
Private Function GetRange(week As Integer, range As Integer, month As String) As String
''Weekly Columns are 1=D, 2=H, 3=L,4=P, 5=T
Dim weekColumn As String
Dim strRange As String
Dim tempRange As String
weekColumn = Switch(week = 1, "D", week = 2, "H", week = 3, "L", week = 4, "P", week = 5, "T")
strRange = Switch(range = 1, range1, _
range = 2, range2, _
range = 3, range3, _
range = 4, range4, _
range = 5, range5, _
range = 6, range6, _
range = 7, range7, _
range = 8, range8, _
range = 9, range9, _
range = 10, range10, _
range = 11, range11, _
range = 12, range12)
tempRange = Replace(strRange, "<MONTH>", month)
tempRange = Replace(tempRange, "<WEEK>", weekColumn)
GetRange = tempRange
End Function
Private Function GetPreviousMonthFromMonth(month As String)
GetPreviousMonthFromMonth = Switch(month = "Jan", "Jan", _
month = "Feb", "Jan", _
month = "Mar", "Feb", _
month = "Apr", "Mar", _
month = "May", "Apr", _
month = "Jun", "May", _
month = "Jul", "Jun", _
month = "Aug", "Jul", _
month = "Sep", "Aug", _
month = "Oct", "Sep", _
month = "Nov", "Oct", _
month = "Dec", "Nov")
End Function
Private Function ConfirmCopy() As Boolean
Dim result As VbMsgBoxResult
result = MsgBox("Copying will replace any vaules you have already entered with those from last month" _
& vbCr & "Do you want to do this?", vbYesNo, "Replace this Month's Data?")
If result = vbNo Then
ConfirmCopy = False
Else
ConfirmCopy = True
End If
End Function
Public Sub CopyMonth()
''Make sure they want to copy and did not
''click by accident
Dim confirm As Boolean
confirm = ConfirmCopy
If confirm = False Then Exit Sub
Dim previousMonth As String
Dim thisMonth As String
Dim lastMonthRange As String
Dim thisMonthRange As String
Dim weekNumber As Integer
Dim rangeNumber As Integer
''Call to initialize variables
SetupVars
''Get the Month names involved in the copy
thisMonth = ActiveSheet.Name
previousMonth = GetPreviousMonthFromMonth(thisMonth)
''There are 48 ranges on each sheet that need to be copied, thats 96 total ranges
For weekNumber = 1 To 5
For rangeNumber = 1 To 12
''Get Range as a string
lastMonthRange = GetRange(weekNumber, rangeNumber, previousMonth)
thisMonthRange = GetRange(weekNumber, rangeNumber, thisMonth)
range(lastMonthRange).Copy
range(thisMonthRange).PasteSpecial xlPasteValues
range(thisMonthRange).NumberFormat = "$#,##0_);($#,##0)"
Next rangeNumber
Next weekNumber
''move the selection back to the top of the sheet
range("A1").Show
range("A1").Select
End Sub
[/code]
Get the Spreadsheet From Here
Ok so I have used my last budget spreadsheet for a year now and I had a few things that I wanted to change. Here they are. I won’t bother explaining Dave’s budget form, if you have not read my first post on this, please read the post My First Dave Spreadsheet.
My list of complaints from the first spreadsheet were (keep in mind that I’m the nerd)
Only one month at a time. I didn’t like starting each month from scratch.
As I have already described the why of this spreadsheet in by previous post, I will go into the how in this one.
Lets start off with some basic info on how each months sheets are laid out.
Click on each picture to see it full size.
This screenshot shows several different items
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Shows the total of all income for the month
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Shows Dave’s Categories and his recommended percentages for each
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Shows the percentage of total income for each category as well as the Total $$ spent in that category
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Shows the monthly total for each line item for the entire budget.
You will notice that some of the columns on the left are color coded. The colors represent the following….
Green = Cash, as in Envelope, these map to Dave’s suggested categories
Yellow = Budget Savings. These are the categories that I actually moved money from my checking account into my savings account (which needs to be tracked, more on that later)
Red = Debt = Stop! Any line in Red shows a payment to debt. Hopefully None!
White = Normal category. Nothing special down with these.
At the bottom of each monthly page you will see some totals.
In each of the numbered columns you will see the total for that pay period of the categories that I need to do something with.
- The Green row shows how much cash I need to take out of my account and put in the envelopes.
- The Yellow row shows how much money I need to transfer into my budget savings account
(I also have two other savings accounts for my mortgage escrow and my Christmas club)
- The Blue row shows how much I need to transfer for escrow savings (real estate taxes)
- The orange row show how much I need to transfer to my Christmas club account.
- The Red row shows how much of each pay period went to paying down debt (Hopefully None)
On the left you will see the total for the month for each of the colored categories.
Budget Savings
What is Budget Savings?
Budget Savings is a separate savings account that I transfer money to for items that I don’t have to pay every month but I have money set aside for every month. An good example of this is Car Insurance. I pay ~ $300 every 3 months for car insurance. So I have my monthly budget set up to take $50 out of every paycheck and transfer that to my budget savings account. So I will put $100 into this account in January, February and March and then move $300 back to checking when I write the check. When I do that, I will put $300 in the red area of the budget savings sheet for car insurance of that particular month.
On the “Budget Savings” sheet listed after “Dec” you will see the amounts for each budget category transferred from each of the monthly sheets.
There are few things to look at on this sheet. The first is the at the very top of the sheet where you will enter in any carry over savings for each category that you have at the start of the year. These numbers are used to calculate totals for the categories as you add and remove money throughout the year.
As you scroll down the Budget Savings sheet you will see that the category sections are repeated for each month. The total in that category is the sum of the total for that category at the end of the previous month plus any additions for that month (listed in green) minus any subtractions for that month (listed in red).
The green section is automatically filled in for you from the respective monthly sheet, which is why there are 4 columns, one for each week.
The red section needs to be filled in by you as you pull money out of that category. As you can see from the screen shot at the right, there was a $150 car repair in the 4th week of February. You will notice that at the end of January “Car Repairs” had $250. Then after removing $150 in February, there was $100 remaining.
Summary
The very last tab is the “Summary” page. This page looks very much like the individual monthly pages. The main difference is instead of having 4 columns representing the 4 weeks per month, there are 12 columns representing each month.
The “Total” column works just like it does on the monthly sheets but now you can see what you have spent on that category year to date.
Also the percentages work just like the monthly ones but for the whole year.
The Setup Tab
The very first Tab is called “Setup” all you need to do on this tab is enter the year for the budget. This will make sure that the dates at the top of each month is correct.
Ok so onto the download… in a minute….
I have actually gone through 3 revisions of this excel sheet.
In the first revision I simply had the 12 blank months listed. By blank I mean no data or references to other months (although the Budget Savings and Summery did pull data from monthly sheets). But me being as lazy as I am thought that this was a waste of time with data entry, because most of the data from month to month was the same. So I figured I could improve on it….
Which brings me to the the second revision. In the second revision I set up each month to pull it’s data from the previous month. By doing this I got some benefits and some drawbacks. The befits was reduced data entry. If I updated my Gas budget in March from $125 to $150 , then April would be updated to $150 and so would each of the reaming months. Then in April if I update Gas again to $175 then May would be updated to $175 as well as the other remaining months and so on… The problem with this approach is that I threw off my Summary tab a lot (because the whole year was filled out in January) and it threw off the Budget Savings tab a little (because it would calculate all of the months) but this is not that big of a deal as the Budget Savings tab has totals for each month and I just had to know that all future moths data was bogus (not very clean for my taste). So I figured I could improve on it….
Which brings my to the Third revision. This is the version available for download. In this version I have a button at the top of each month (except January) that copies the data from the previous month, so I get the benefit of fast data entry, AND all future months still are blank, so I get the summary and budget savings tabs to look correct throughout the year.
Yippee!!!!
Not So Fast!.
There is one draw back. The third revision requires that Macros be enabled. This is not a real big deal but with so many people afraid of viruses, they may have macros disabled. You don’t have to have macros enabled to use this file, if you don’t you will just have to manually enter the data for each month. No Biggie. As part of giving back to the community I have post the source code for the macro on this blog and you can view it here angus65.com/development/excel-budget-vba-code/
The Excel File can be downloaded from here
Thanks for stopping by.
Tags: Budget, Dave Ramsey, Finances, FPU
On May 25th some really good friends of ours, some good friends of ours, some friends our ours, some people that felt sorry for us invited us over for a pig roast. It was a blast and here are some pictures of the event.
The Big Pig Roast of ‘08
(it may take a few seconds to load, be patient)
I especially like picture “IMG_1563“. I think Debi had seen a ghost. Either that or Pete just told her that he had invited me
Also check out picture “IMG_1590″ of the bonfire. Those are NOT people standing in front of it. Could be what Debi saw in IMG_1563.
Also, I’m not sure why Pete is always showing everyone his muscles (trying to compensate for something Pete?)
Anyway, Thanks for inviting us guys.
Last week I was listening to Dave Ramsey and he was talking about the 20 things you would want to SAVE if your house was on fire. Here is my list
1) My Wife
1) My One Daughter (Name withheld to avoid the…Dad loves me (you) the best)
1) My Other Daughter (Ditto)
You will notice that all of the above are numbered #1. This is for my own safety.
I would not stop running back into a burning house until all three were safe. I would easily give my life for theirs. That’s not me being a hero, that’s me being selfish. I couldn’t bear to live without any one of them.
4) Our Dog Madison
Number 4 above is a special case, We do consider her part of the family and I would pain me to know she suffered, but she is not as important as my family and not worth leaving the kids without a dad. So as much as it would pain me to I don’t think I would go back into the burning house. Plus she ate my slippers.
5) Keepsakes that were my Dad’s (His Navy uniform, a wooden box with some of his cufflinks, tie clips etc)
6) A storage tote with some quilts (and other items) my Grandma made for me and my wife, and a box of my Grandma’s dishes that I got when she died
7) The external Hard Drive that I use to back up my computer. This has all of the digital photos / videos that I have taken of my girls and family. I guess this is the 21st century version of the old photo albums that families used to keep in the hall closet. The only difference is in the old days I would be carrying out about 300 photo albums that hold the 30,000 pictures I have on the hard drive. I highly recommend you get one and start backing up your computer. Click Here read how you can do it.
The picture my Wife has of her Aunt beside our bed and the painting her Aunt made before she died.
Ok at this point I’m stumped. I have my family and any memories of family that could not be replaced. Anything else on the list is just stuff and could easily be replaced. In fact if I really think about it, I should be having a garage sale to get ride of most of it anyway, and use the money to pay off the Student Loans. A house is just Sticks, Drywall, Paint and some Shingles. It’s everything above that makes it a home.
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Tags: family
I went out last week to eat lunch at this fine Mexican restaurant, Taco Bell. The total came to $5.81. I gave the girl $6.00. After about 5 seconds you could see the pain on her face as she tried to do some cipherin’.
She then says “81 from 6?”
I simply replied “19″.
She said,”Thanks the computer usually does that for me, but this time it didn’t”
So she can’t do math. Big deal. It’s not like anyone will ever need math. I just hope that she graduated with a high self-esteem, isn’t that the real goal of today’s educational system.
Just to have some fun, before I left, I went back and ordered another taco.
The total was $.79. I gave here $2.63.
Her head exploded.
Tags: Funny
I was recently tagged by my brother with his list of 3’s. Here’s Mine.
Three jobs I have had in my life: Shipping clerk at a Bolt & Nut factory, Dive Instructor on a Cruise Ship, Tech Support for Apple Computers (Performa Line)
Three places I have lived: Rockford, IL, Tempe, AZ, On a Cruise Ship in the Bahamas
Three shows that I watch: Family Guy, anything on History Channel, anything on Discovery Channel
Three people who e-mail me regularly: My Brother, Chris, That Guy selling all of the Male Enhancement products
Three places I’d rather be right now: Arizona, On The Beach, Under water (Scuba Diving)
Three friends I think will respond: Chris, Jeremiah, Adam
Three things I am looking forward to this year: Starting a new job, Calling Dave Ramsey and Yelling “I’m Debt Free”, Having fun with Friends & Neighbors
Tags: About-Me
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