So I'm 66 years old and for the first time ever this is a computer based budget tutorial I can actually follow. I am retiring sometime in the next two years and need to actually track my finances in detail for the first time ever. I have always done OK just generally knowing what is going on with my finances up to now but times are changing. I love this video!
thank you so much for this, as a 33 year old millennial starting my first business and who studied philosophy - I can't tell you how helpful this is, in a practical and grounding way. I suppose I should have learned basic finance earlier. But as the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now. 🤟😁
Thank goodness someone made a video for explaining this template. I really appreciate you Michael for taking the time out and putting effort to explain how this works. I have learned a life skill in a short amount of time. Thanks to you! 💝
This is amazing! I came to UA-cam searching for tutorials because I looked at the Google budgeting spreadsheets and had no idea how to even get started with them. I am so glad I found this video - I'm all set up and ready for the month. Thank you!!!
So much info in a relatively short video. Thank you! For someone who has always experienced a mental block with spreadsheets, this video made me excited about befriending the essential tool. Thank you!!
This video is awesome! I have been putting off budgeting for a long time because I was always intimidated by the process - but you've made everything so clear and straightforward with the template! Thank you so much, Michael!
Really excellent video. My wife and I toggled back and forth between your video and our budget in google sheets. Thansk for doing this. Very much appreciated
Wow, super helpful for someone who is terrified of Excel spreadsheets - this budget template is so very useful with clear instructions which are super easy to follow - thank you!
thank you so much, bro. When I first used the spreadsheet I was confused as to why it wasn't working the way I wanted it to but after watching this vid I saw where I went wrong. Thanks.
Thank you very much!! I'm looking forward to starting 2024 with a vision and a plan to follow in order to stop procrastinating and finally achieve my goals!
Thank You! This was exactly what I needed to simplify our budget. I am not comfortable with this type of thing but your video was perfect! Great explanation and detail without unnecessary talking.
Dude- This was so incredibly helpful! Thank you so very much! I have literally never budgeted before so thank you so so so much! Give yourself a raise my friend!
Man! You are awesome! I was miserable with how I was tracking my expenses. Belive it or not, in a .txt file LOL. This is so great. Thank you for a hundred times.
Thank you for this clear and simple explanation of how to track money and budgeting. As most of them have stated I also had trouble using mobile apps to keep track of my money and cannot get a clear overview. Thank you again for explaining this clearly I am yet to try this out and it seems it's very simple with also having the ability to record with the phone which I did not know much about until you explained. Seems everything can be recorded and transferred to other sheets automatically. Great work! Thanks a lot for taking your time to explain this to us
I tried using the budget template on my own and was unsuccessful...couldn't figure it out. Your video is an excellent tool to get this started. Thank you!!
This is super super helpful!! I also have my transactions upload automatically by using an IFTT tie-in from my banking app to google sheets, which adds a row to the spreadsheet every time I use my card :)
I'd love a video on how to tweak this to make it work for us. I like when dates auto go in order, so I can enter the expenses in any order and then they auto go in order... is there a way to do that?
This has helped a lot over the last year, thank you! I was wondering if there is a way one can add another section (apart from savings and expenses) for savings? I would like it seperate from expenses and savings since it doesn't really fit in either category.
@@alisa_ilse great question. You could make a separate sheet for savings. What I do is list “transfer to savings” or “savings goal” as an expense. Then I log it as an expense on the last day of the month (assuming I have enough in my budget to save). Then I track the savings over time using a separate simple sheet and my banking apps.
First, this was so helpful! I have a question about fixed expenses that are not monthly… and where/how you recommend tracking those and planning for them. I guess it’s similar to others’ questions about how to save up and track accruing money.. or rolling over leftover money.
I zero it out because I don't use it. But you could use it if you wanted to roughly track your net worth? I do that with the Mint and Personal Capital apps.
If you use the income side, definitely have paychecks. But you can add other income and I would recommend that. Even things like bank account interest on your savings count as income! If you need more rows, you add them the same way as I showed for expenses.
Thank you so much for this! My only question is this. Why do you enter the amounts on the copy? Then you have to re-enter all of your expenses every month, yes?
Hi. You can do it either way. I like to fill in the fields every month and use the previous month’s results to inform that. Those with more stable spending could have more fields in the copy version filled in to save time.
Can you create multiple pages on one file? So for instance can i have the whole year under one file or would i need to create a new file for every month?
I am currently working on a solution to this-- respond back and I will let you know once I figure it out. I just started using Google Sheets for budgeting literally today but I think I know what to do
My Google sheets budget comes with numbers in the "actual" column and when I go to edit it just has a formula. I can't figure out how to correct it but maybe I can just delete those rows. This video is great! I'm gonna continue watching now 😊
Hello Michael, would you be able to explain how to add in if you are putting money into a savings account each month for a specific event/trip/etc.. Right now I have them just as a transaction with their own category but it still shows that I am spending that money each month rather than saving and I just keep track of the savings on a different tab. BUT I would love it if there was a way to incorporate that into the summary sheet without having another sheet to track. TIA!
Hi, thank you for the informative video, it helps me alot. One quick question, what does "starting balance" on the summary mean? And do I need to keep it 0 monthly? thank you for helping
Love this video but what about annual expenses that are fixed? currently, i calculate them down to a monthly amount and add them to fixed expenses. is there a better way?
This has been very helpful, thank you! I just have a question, if anyone knows. Why put fixed expenses as part of planned expenses? It just adds my total fixed expenses to my itemized expenses which doubles things under Planned Totals. I feel like I must be missing something?
Thanks for this video, very useful! I do have a question though about the use of the "Savings" option in the income page. I do keep running into the issue when i have automated transfers from my chequing to my savings accounts or contributions into RRSP or TFSA. As they actually reduce the "free to use" amount of money it shows it should go onto the expense side, but i am also still having the money myself so also on the income side? but then they do seem to balance each other out which is not what i believe should happen? HELP PLEASE :D
Hello Michael! Thank you very much for teaching us about this free Google Spreadsheet. I had a question about what the "opening balance" that is inserted in cell L8 would be. I'm still lost on this concept, could you explain it better and give an example?
I don't use that field (I think I mentioned in the video, but maybe not.) I guess you could use it as a starting balance for the month. For me, I blank it out and just log transactions with this spreadsheet.
Hi, first of all, thank you for this video!! My partner and I have set up our own with our limited knowledge of google sheets/excel and we are shifting to the one youve showed! Took me 15 minutes to get it all done w your tutorial. Love it. However, I have a few queries if you dont mind sharing the way of doing it: 1. Is it possible to have two transaction tab with only one summary? (One transaction tab for each of us however we would like our summary to be combined) - i tried to copy the transaction tab however the functions dont connect to the summary tab like the first transaction tab. 2. How do I have a continuous system on month to month basis? Meaning, any balances are carried forward to next month’s ‘automatically’? Or needs manual transfer still? Btw, would really appreciate more series like this for intermediate and advanced! Or elaboration or more detailed system of the beginner one. Love it! Thanks, Illy
To answer your first question, you could create separate categories for each person. Lunch money person 1. Lunch money person 2. I don’t know another way. As for question 2, I get this a lot but that’s what I use Empower for. I only use this template for monthly expense tracking. I will look into it.
Thanks for the awesome and clear tutorial. This will make things so much easier! Do you have any suggestions for how to sort the expense and income line items (transactions page) by date automatically? I can see things getting out of order quickly, and having them arranged by date would make cross-checking with bank statements much easier. Thanks again!
Thanks for the video! How do you track savings? Is it first deducted from the Expense side and then added to the Income side? In your example, I see you have a deduction for transfer to savings, but I didn't see an entry on the income side. I want to make sure I'm doing it right. Also, is your starting balance whatever is left over from the previous month, if any, correct? Thanks, I like this! I've struck BUDGET GOLD!
I just use it as a monthly expense tracker. I use Mint and Empower to track net worth over time, which is why I don't have fields for balances of my checking and savings accounts anywhere. However, you can use the spreadsheet to track money over time or play around with the annual budget version in Google Sheets. Let's say you decide to use the starting balance field -- enter whatever money you have in your bank accounts. Then, do the budget as normal for the month to track expenses. Then, adjust the starting balance for the following month based on how much you were over/under the previous month.
Did you restart when you moved to the web? I have a written tutorial here: michaelsaves.com/budgeting/google-sheets-budget-template/ If you start over and still have trouble, I will retest. I have done this probably 100 times over the years for people. Usually they figure it out the second time. But it’s always possible Google changed something.
This is a good tutorial. I only have a few things I would do differently. Number one is the groceries. I rarely just buy groceries when i go to the store. I'll buy food and things like trash bags or dish soap. So doing it your way, i'd have to go through the receipt and separate out the groceries. On mine I just put a Household Shopping tab and that includes anything I buy for the household like groceries or soap or tin foil or toilet paper. I also don't like what you did with the "fixed expenses" since utilities tend to be different each month and I want to be able to record them all individually in the transactions tab. I want to see the electric, water, cell phone, Netflix separately not combined into one category where I can't see how much each are individually so I can tell if one is higher than I want it to be or if I need to cut the netflix a few months or something.
So I'm 66 years old and for the first time ever this is a computer based budget tutorial I can actually follow. I am retiring sometime in the next two years and need to actually track my finances in detail for the first time ever. I have always done OK just generally knowing what is going on with my finances up to now but times are changing. I love this video!
I noticed he has a written version of the tutorial in the video description, if that would make it easier for you.
@@ProdiJoee Thanks!
@ProdiJoee I feel pretty dumb as I realize UA-cam lets you control the speed. All I have to do is slow it down 25%.... I deleted my updated comment.
How can i change the dollar symbol to naira?
If i want to base the income and expense on termly bases on can i change it?
@@FatimaOgunbona select the amount you want to change then:
click on format
click on number
select your currency
Top-notch explanation! Very easy to follow. Excellent teaching, thank you so very much!
thank you so much for this, as a 33 year old millennial starting my first business and who studied philosophy - I can't tell you how helpful this is, in a practical and grounding way. I suppose I should have learned basic finance earlier. But as the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now. 🤟😁
Thank goodness someone made a video for explaining this template.
I really appreciate you Michael for taking the time out and putting effort to explain how this works. I have learned a life skill in a short amount of time. Thanks to you! 💝
Wonderful and easy to follow explanation! Great job Micheal. Greatly appreciated!!!
I'm up and running in 10 minutes. That's pretty awesome, Michael Saves!
This is amazing! I came to UA-cam searching for tutorials because I looked at the Google budgeting spreadsheets and had no idea how to even get started with them. I am so glad I found this video - I'm all set up and ready for the month. Thank you!!!
So much info in a relatively short video. Thank you! For someone who has always experienced a mental block with spreadsheets, this video made me excited about befriending the essential tool. Thank you!!
This video is awesome! I have been putting off budgeting for a long time because I was always intimidated by the process - but you've made everything so clear and straightforward with the template! Thank you so much, Michael!
Really excellent video. My wife and I toggled back and forth between your video and our budget in google sheets. Thansk for doing this. Very much appreciated
Wow, super helpful for someone who is terrified of Excel spreadsheets - this budget template is so very useful with clear instructions which are super easy to follow - thank you!
thank you so much, bro.
When I first used the spreadsheet I was confused as to why it wasn't working the way I wanted it to but after watching this vid I saw where I went wrong.
Thanks.
This made me understand so much better I was lost but now im super excited to start budgeting.
Thank you so much. I have been trying to do this for hours and you just helped me so much.
This included nice clear and concise instructions, Thanks,👍 Michael.
Thank you very much!! I'm looking forward to starting 2024 with a vision and a plan to follow in order to stop procrastinating and finally achieve my goals!
Thank You! This was exactly what I needed to simplify our budget. I am not comfortable with this type of thing but your video was perfect! Great explanation and detail without unnecessary talking.
Thank you so so much for this Michael! I've been looking for something like this for years now! Thankyou!
Thank you! I never knew this existed and now I'm using it and I love it!
This was so helpful! Thanks for walking through everything step by step!
Thank you so much for this very detailed and easy to follow tutorial! You explain things so well and I appreciate it! Thank you!
Dude- This was so incredibly helpful! Thank you so very much! I have literally never budgeted before so thank you so so so much! Give yourself a raise my friend!
Man! You are awesome! I was miserable with how I was tracking my expenses. Belive it or not, in a .txt file LOL.
This is so great. Thank you for a hundred times.
This is literally GOLD.
Thanks, man.
This was so helpful! Very simple and easy to follow. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!
🔥 You Just made my budget journey so much easier. Thank you 🔥
Quick question how do I change the date on transaction tap from newest to oldest without messing up everything?
Clear, Concise and to the point. Great job. I installed the app, so easy to load transactions as they happen. Yahoo!!
Super awesome tutorial. Very grateful for your time and effort!😎👍👍🙏🙏Thank you very much!
Thank you for this clear and simple explanation of how to track money and budgeting. As most of them have stated I also had trouble using mobile apps to keep track of my money and cannot get a clear overview. Thank you again for explaining this clearly I am yet to try this out and it seems it's very simple with also having the ability to record with the phone which I did not know much about until you explained. Seems everything can be recorded and transferred to other sheets automatically.
Great work! Thanks a lot for taking your time to explain this to us
Damn this was fast, short, and very informative. much thanks man
You saved my life with this one. Thanks a lot!!!!
Thank you somuch for this tutorial! It was INCREDIBLY helpful!!!
great tutorial!
Thank you, Michael.
Thank you soooo much! You've helped me a lot man
Thank you for this video!
Really helpful video, thanks for posting !
This video was amazing, excellent job! Thank you so much!
SO helpful - thank you!!
This has helped me so much!!!! THANK YOUUUUUUU
Great, I just started using it last week, Then I found your tutorial
Great video and explanation Michael! Thank you!!
This is really a great video. Thank you for sharing this. I’m not a pro at this yet but with your help I am off to a good start. Thanks you
I tried using the budget template on my own and was unsuccessful...couldn't figure it out. Your video is an excellent tool to get this started. Thank you!!
Thank you very much for this tutorial. It was very helpful and easy to understand.
I had this budget template so screwed up before I found this video, LOL. Thank you so much!
This was great! I am on the way to financial freedom. thank you so much :)
This was incredibly helpful! thank you so much!
This is amazing, thank you!
Super helpful. Thank you 😄
Very helpful video.😊😊
Great video !
THANK YOU! Needed this
Great sharing. Thank you,
This is super super helpful!! I also have my transactions upload automatically by using an IFTT tie-in from my banking app to google sheets, which adds a row to the spreadsheet every time I use my card :)
This is legit. Thank you.
you made this very easy . Thank you!
Brilliant. Thanks so very much.
Huge help Thank you!!! If I wanted to make this also a weekly- is it as simply as just changing income to weekly/the text to weekly.
Yes you could do that!
I'd love a video on how to tweak this to make it work for us. I like when dates auto go in order, so I can enter the expenses in any order and then they auto go in order... is there a way to do that?
This has helped a lot over the last year, thank you! I was wondering if there is a way one can add another section (apart from savings and expenses) for savings? I would like it seperate from expenses and savings since it doesn't really fit in either category.
@@alisa_ilse great question. You could make a separate sheet for savings. What I do is list “transfer to savings” or “savings goal” as an expense. Then I log it as an expense on the last day of the month (assuming I have enough in my budget to save). Then I track the savings over time using a separate simple sheet and my banking apps.
First, this was so helpful! I have a question about fixed expenses that are not monthly… and where/how you recommend tracking those and planning for them. I guess it’s similar to others’ questions about how to save up and track accruing money.. or rolling over leftover money.
I have an old blog post/video on this topic! michaelsaves.com/save-money/google-sheets-budget-irregular-expenses/
This is great thanks
Thank you! Much appreciated!
Thank you. So easy to follow.
Thank you so much for this! I'm just having a hard time on my iPad. It seems some of the functions aren't available 😢
So goooood! Thank you!!!!!!
Thank you.
Thanks I spent a whole day to find you
thank you for such a great video, how can we change Currency?
Is there a way to add the date the bills are due on the fixed expenses page?
You could add another column for that!
Can you discuss the Start Balance and End Balance section?
I zero it out because I don't use it. But you could use it if you wanted to roughly track your net worth? I do that with the Mint and Personal Capital apps.
@@MichaelSaves In the Get Started section, the sheet says enter in cell L8. Enter what? My account balance at the first of the month?
@@gregpulley421 this video I explain my method. I ignore that section.
So under the income section on paychecks we only put paychecks or should we do a total monthly income? As well?
If you use the income side, definitely have paychecks. But you can add other income and I would recommend that. Even things like bank account interest on your savings count as income! If you need more rows, you add them the same way as I showed for expenses.
is there anyway to make the expense diff roll over to next month?
Thanks for the great video!!! I'm wondering if there is a good way to log transactions in mixed currency?
Thank you so much for this! My only question is this. Why do you enter the amounts on the copy? Then you have to re-enter all of your expenses every month, yes?
Hi. You can do it either way. I like to fill in the fields every month and use the previous month’s results to inform that. Those with more stable spending could have more fields in the copy version filled in to save time.
Can you create multiple pages on one file? So for instance can i have the whole year under one file or would i need to create a new file for every month?
I don't know how to do this, but I need to look into it because you're not the first person to ask. I made a new spreadsheet for every month.
I am currently working on a solution to this-- respond back and I will let you know once I figure it out. I just started using Google Sheets for budgeting literally today but I think I know what to do
How can you customzie the colors in this spreadsheet? I don't like the orange and I get the pop up warning.
Question for the “starting balance” tab rather than zero can you just put whatever money you have at the beginning of the month?
Of course. That works!
My Google sheets budget comes with numbers in the "actual" column and when I go to edit it just has a formula. I can't figure out how to correct it but maybe I can just delete those rows. This video is great! I'm gonna continue watching now 😊
Hello Michael, would you be able to explain how to add in if you are putting money into a savings account each month for a specific event/trip/etc.. Right now I have them just as a transaction with their own category but it still shows that I am spending that money each month rather than saving and I just keep track of the savings on a different tab. BUT I would love it if there was a way to incorporate that into the summary sheet without having another sheet to track.
TIA!
For this I do Transfer to Savings as a transaction line and keep it as part of my expenses.
Is there a way to customize the theme? I hate the navy/orange situation but my computer won't let me change it for whatever reason.
How do you create more spaces on the expenses side under the transactions tab
Hi, thank you for the informative video, it helps me alot. One quick question, what does "starting balance" on the summary mean? And do I need to keep it 0 monthly? thank you for helping
I zero it out. I guess you could use it if you had carryover money from a previous month. I just don’t use the sheet that way.
Love this video but what about annual expenses that are fixed? currently, i calculate them down to a monthly amount and add them to fixed expenses. is there a better way?
This is what I do!
This has been very helpful, thank you! I just have a question, if anyone knows. Why put fixed expenses as part of planned expenses? It just adds my total fixed expenses to my itemized expenses which doubles things under Planned Totals.
I feel like I must be missing something?
Is it possible to make a google
Form that I could enter a transaction on that will populate the spreadsheet? Thank you
Thank you!
Thanks for this video, very useful! I do have a question though about the use of the "Savings" option in the income page. I do keep running into the issue when i have automated transfers from my chequing to my savings accounts or contributions into RRSP or TFSA. As they actually reduce the "free to use" amount of money it shows it should go onto the expense side, but i am also still having the money myself so also on the income side? but then they do seem to balance each other out which is not what i believe should happen? HELP PLEASE :D
Hello Michael! Thank you very much for teaching us about this free Google Spreadsheet. I had a question about what the "opening balance" that is inserted in cell L8 would be. I'm still lost on this concept, could you explain it better and give an example?
I don't use that field (I think I mentioned in the video, but maybe not.) I guess you could use it as a starting balance for the month. For me, I blank it out and just log transactions with this spreadsheet.
Hi, first of all, thank you for this video!! My partner and I have set up our own with our limited knowledge of google sheets/excel and we are shifting to the one youve showed! Took me 15 minutes to get it all done w your tutorial. Love it.
However, I have a few queries if you dont mind sharing the way of doing it:
1. Is it possible to have two transaction tab with only one summary? (One transaction tab for each of us however we would like our summary to be combined) - i tried to copy the transaction tab however the functions dont connect to the summary tab like the first transaction tab.
2. How do I have a continuous system on month to month basis? Meaning, any balances are carried forward to next month’s ‘automatically’? Or needs manual transfer still?
Btw, would really appreciate more series like this for intermediate and advanced! Or elaboration or more detailed system of the beginner one. Love it!
Thanks,
Illy
To answer your first question, you could create separate categories for each person. Lunch money person 1. Lunch money person 2. I don’t know another way. As for question 2, I get this a lot but that’s what I use Empower for. I only use this template for monthly expense tracking. I will look into it.
Thanks for the awesome and clear tutorial. This will make things so much easier!
Do you have any suggestions for how to sort the expense and income line items (transactions page) by date automatically? I can see things getting out of order quickly, and having them arranged by date would make cross-checking with bank statements much easier. Thanks again!
I just add the date to the transactions tab as I record expenses in real time.
Thanks for the video! How do you track savings? Is it first deducted from the Expense side and then added to the Income side? In your example, I see you have a deduction for transfer to savings, but I didn't see an entry on the income side. I want to make sure I'm doing it right. Also, is your starting balance whatever is left over from the previous month, if any, correct? Thanks, I like this! I've struck BUDGET GOLD!
I just use it as a monthly expense tracker. I use Mint and Empower to track net worth over time, which is why I don't have fields for balances of my checking and savings accounts anywhere. However, you can use the spreadsheet to track money over time or play around with the annual budget version in Google Sheets. Let's say you decide to use the starting balance field -- enter whatever money you have in your bank accounts. Then, do the budget as normal for the month to track expenses. Then, adjust the starting balance for the following month based on how much you were over/under the previous month.
Great video. Do you have one or plan to make one for using Sheets to track investments? Thanks so much.
I use the Personal Capital app to track my investments and net worth. Mint is another free option.
Great Video! but what do I do the next month, do I have to make a new sheet??
Yes, that is what I do. It's an expense tracking tool for me. I use Empower for big picture -- net worth tracking.
@@MichaelSavesOk thanks 👌🏽
Nice Works Michael. is there a way to use only one sheet for every month instead of make a copy ?
I’m not sure of a way to do that.
Okay, using the web to edit the copy. What if the data validation isn't working?
Did you restart when you moved to the web? I have a written tutorial here: michaelsaves.com/budgeting/google-sheets-budget-template/ If you start over and still have trouble, I will retest. I have done this probably 100 times over the years for people. Usually they figure it out the second time. But it’s always possible Google changed something.
Thank you! 🙏🏼
How do you fix it for rounding? Example power bill is 92.14 it drops the 14
Great video Michael, thanks! Quick question, how do I change the currency tp £?
I have a separate video here: ua-cam.com/video/SKX7WaMos9M/v-deo.html
@@MichaelSavesPlus Star! Thank you
This is a good tutorial. I only have a few things I would do differently. Number one is the groceries. I rarely just buy groceries when i go to the store. I'll buy food and things like trash bags or dish soap. So doing it your way, i'd have to go through the receipt and separate out the groceries. On mine I just put a Household Shopping tab and that includes anything I buy for the household like groceries or soap or tin foil or toilet paper. I also don't like what you did with the "fixed expenses" since utilities tend to be different each month and I want to be able to record them all individually in the transactions tab. I want to see the electric, water, cell phone, Netflix separately not combined into one category where I can't see how much each are individually so I can tell if one is higher than I want it to be or if I need to cut the netflix a few months or something.