Check out more budgeting advice, tips and tricks so you can make the most out of your money. Of course, a properly calculated budget doesn’t just happen overnight. And when tax season rolls around, you have a convenient document to draw from, instead of hunting down receipts to present to your tax preparer. Work travel (broken down to lodging, meals, etc.)īusiness-focused templates are available for Excel, especially specific ones that keep track of your bill payments, general ledgers, or even expense reports for startups.īy tracking your expenses for your business in a spreadsheet, you can also identify potential sources for fraud, such as monetary discrepancies for yourself and others.Some of the most common categories for business expenses include: If you own a small business, you’ll have expenditures in different categories to record. Business expenses to consider for your monthly tracker By using the AutoSum feature, you can see how much you’ll be spending per month, or year, and tweak your budget to match your goals. Lastly, Excel makes it easy to tally up a total cost across columns. You can estimate how much you’ll pay per month for utilities, or if you know that you have a fixed rate for mortgages and loans, you can fill in the blanks ahead of time. Your rows can be tied to the months in this year where you’re anticipated to make monthly payments or save for major repairs. In an Excel template, you can create new sheets for each of these major categories, then break them down to specific expenses.įor example, create a new sheet, name it Housing, and then dedicate a column to the expenses that fall under this category (monthly mortgage payments, anticipated home repairs, etc.). Goals: Something you might be saving for in the long term, whether it’s a new car, an appliance upgrade, or sending a child to college.Emergency savings: Create an emergency savings fund and be prepared for anything.Entertainment: streaming subscriptions, video games, live shows, upcoming vacations and weekend getaways.Utilities: gas, water, heat, electricity, and Internet.Transportation: auto loans, public transit fare, car maintenance and repairs.
Housing: mortgage payments, home repairs, homeowners’ insurance, and property taxes.Important categories in your personal budgetįor the average household, expense trackers usually contain the following: The fundamental questions you want to be able to answer with a quick glimpse are, “What did I spend my money on, and how much did I spend?” Spreadsheet software like Excel is ideal for displaying this information in rows and columns. For example, you might want to plan for early retirement, or a hybrid scenario where you keep working part-time or otherwise choose to delay your social security benefits.Manage your finances with this free expense tracker template Go to Excel A typical portfolio will include stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), options, and other securities. These spreadsheets can even help you find the best age to retire. Search spreadsheets by type or topic, or take a look around by browsing the catalog. You dont need to be an expert in design or Excel. So here are seven of the best free retirement spreadsheet templates. Create custom budgets, invoices, schedules, calendars, planners, trackers, and more with easily customizable Excel templates. You can build your own retirement planner, but it’s faster and easier to get started with a free template. Get started with an easy retirement template Learn about Tiller’s Foundation Template. And then in your post-retirement years, you can customize your spreadsheet with a budget that helps you optimize spending and protect your nest egg.įollowing a budget can help you save more for retirement and reach your long-term financial goals. You can start using one today to budget, pay down debt, and track your net worth. Spreadsheets are also the one financial planning tool you will never outgrow. (Of course, the future is uncertain, as are long-term rates of return, inflation, and even lifespan, so no plan is guaranteed – but as they say, failure to plan is planning to fail.) It can also help you see where to make changes today to get where you want to be in the future. This will provide an accurate picture of what your retirement might look like. With a retirement spreadsheet, you can easily input your own numbers and experiment with different savings, investment growth, and withdrawal rate scenarios. A spreadsheet is a perfect tool for the job.
Preparing your retirement takes careful planning that begins years in advance.