Excell and or budget question

[PrincessPerky]

Do you put all the months on the same sheet, or do you have one page per month?

Right now I have my budgeted amount then the next column is my actual spending for January, then the difference column, then the february actual and february difference.

Is that bad? And does that make any sense whatsoever?

[boefixepa]

The way you are doing it will make for easier comparion then you could add a monthly average at the end of the year and simply use a different sheet for every year. I think what your doing would be fine. If it get confusing to look at color code the colums.

[tinapbeana]

perky, there are pluses and minuses to doing it either way. if you'd like, i can email you 2 examples so you can take a look and see which would work better for your situation...

[PrincessPerky]

I had no idea you would read my comment so fast Tina!

I think I see a problem with each month on the same sheet, if I change the budget it effects all the months. I think I will go with one sheet per month, but add a years totals, at the end of each month just copy and paste in there to compare.

Thanks for the ideas.

[JanH]

I do a sheet a month. That way I can spread out all my expense columns, have descending totals and have an income minus expenses section that changes automatically as the money is spent. Hubby helped me set it up and I love it. I can copy the sheet for the next month so that I have the columns and budgeted amount already set up, just erasing the figures for the last month expenses to start over. I love your idea of a month by month sheet also. I think I will set up another one for the totals of each month for comparison purposes. That way I don't have to skip through the sheets to compare how we did the months before.

[kealina]

Originally Posted by PrincessPerky

I had no idea you would read my comment so fast Tina!

I think I see a problem with each month on the same sheet, if I change the budget it effects all the months. I think I will go with one sheet per month, but add a years totals, at the end of each month just copy and paste in there to compare.

Thanks for the ideas.

i think i do something similar to this... i have one sheet per month, with categories and daily spending... then i have a seperate year sheet where i copy all the totals for the month and then compare them all...

[Bookie]

Originally Posted by kealina

i think i do something similar to this... i have one sheet per month, with categories and daily spending... then i have a seperate year sheet where i copy all the totals for the month and then compare them all...

I do something similar as well, only my annual totals are set up with dynamic links so they update automatically.

It is good to be a geek.

[trillium]

I have it a sheet a month - each sheet has two pay period on it.

[tinapbeana]

Originally Posted by Bookie

I do something similar as well, only my annual totals are set up with dynamic links so they update automatically.

It is good to be a geek.

hehehe... as weird al said, "it's all about the pentiums, baby"

then again, i'm one who says the motto of open source and the GPL should be "By Geeks, For Geeks"

[PrincessPerky]

Well can you super geeks tell me how to make my checkbook entry of 'foodlion' automatically post to my food page?

Khavingspacebartroubles...

[CHUBROCK]

I make each month a different worksheet.

What I do is break down my monthly income & expenses by pay period. Right now I am being paid weekly. So what I do is divide each of my monthly bills by 4 (avg 4 weeks per month) and I know exactly how much I need to sock away from each paycheck. By doing it this way there will always be 4 "extra" pay periods during the year. Usually once every 3 months. During these weeks I have a choice of what I want to do. For those bills such as the newspaper delivery that are pretty much billed weekly, I just put away the usual. The "left over" money I can either put towards my debt paydown or anything else I may need. 9 times out of 10 it goes right to my debt paydown.

My father taught me this way of budgeting years ago and it works for me. I have found it easier to divide my money up weekly so I know I will never be short at the end of the month. I have tried to do it montly but I had a hard time grasping it. This takes the "paycheck to paycheck" style of living to a new level. One day it will be used to watch how much $$$ I save on a weekly basis once I pay off the CC, car & student loan.