5 Free, Simple, Personal Monthly Budget Templates

Do you often find yourself living paycheck to paycheck or feel like you’re treading water financially? You’re not alone. In fact, only 30% of Americans have a long-term financial plan that includes savings and investment goals.¹

Want to improve your financial health and start planning for the future? You can take small steps today that will help you get there. The first step? Setting and maintaining a household budget. If you’re unfamiliar with how to structure a budget or want some help getting started, we’ve compiled a list of great resources, all available to you at no cost. This way, you can focus your energy on what’s most important: sticking to that budget!

Here are five free and simple personal budget templates that can help you track your income and expenses for a better financial future:

Office.com Personal Budget Worksheet

Microsoft Office has a wide variety of free personal budget templates to choose from. From expense journals to credit card payoff calculators, mortgage loan calculators to tax journals, Office.com has you covered.

Mint Budget Templates

Mint, known for its easy-to-use app and online site, has published several downloadable budgeting templates based on your lifestyle. Lifestyles vary and so do budgets. Read through their tips and choose from templates like student budget, home budget, daycare budget and more.

Vertext42 Monthly Budget Worksheet Excel

If you’re anticipating some big life changes within the next year, Vertex42’s planner may be right for you. Create a yearly personal budget and estimate how major life changes like moving, switching jobs and buying a home can affect your financial future. Available in Excel, OpenOffice or Google Sheets.

PearBudget Spreadsheet

Featured in the Wall Street Journal and Popular Science, this free budget template from PearBudget might be just what you need to start budgeting. Find out why it’s been downloaded well over 100,000 times. If you prefer to track your spending in the digital space, PearBudget’s latest edition of their popular budget tracker is available online for an additional fee.

Smartsheet Monthly Budgeting Collection

Smartsheet compiles several different templates to help you plan, forecast, track and report with flexibility. Household budget? Yes. Personal budget? Definitely. College student budget? Absolutely. Freelancer? Of course! Smartsheet has a range of templates modified to fit a range of lifestyles for better personalization.

Don’t let your expenses get away from you — start building for the future with one of these four, easy-to-use and FREE personal budget templates. You might also like our user-friendly personal budget worksheet. Whatever method works for you, use it — what’s important isn’t how you budget, but how you stick to it. For more tips on building good habits, check out this post on breaking bad habits and sticking to good ones.

The information in this article is provided for education and informational purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness or fitness for any particular purpose. The information in this article is not intended to be and does not constitute financial or any other advice. The information in this article is general in nature and is not specific to you the user or anyone else.

Resources

¹Debt.com, LLC. (May 25, 2018). Personal finance statistics: How do you compare? Retrieved October 2, 2018, from https://www.debt.com/edu/personal-finance-statistics/