New month = new budget time!

This is a template budget, that I made to keep track of our monthly spending. It calculates -everything- for me, down to the percentages. At a single glance, I can see which category is taking up a large percentage of our income, and can adjust that accordingly.

The first sheet is a daily spending log. It is a hassle to keep up with, but it is a good hassle. I've found myself skipping non-essential purchases simply because I didn't want to record it. The middle sheet is our family budget - projected versus actual income and expenses. And the last sheet is my "budget bank". Basically, whatever we didn't use up a certain category gets carried over to the next month. For example - we buy a 40lb bag of food for our two dogs every 3 months or so. Obviously it doesn't cost a mere $10, but we didn't spend anything towards their food the past 3 months, and therefore we would have enough "saved" in the budget to buy the $30 bag of food.

I've found that keeping track of my budget in this manner has helped us with large infrequent purchases (like dog food). Before we had the budget bank, we used these infrequent purchases as an excuse whenever our one credit card bill was extraordinarily high. But in reality, that large infrequent purchase had little to do with it and was just an excuse.

If anyone would like me to email the excel template file, please leave a comment with how to get in touch with you and I would love to do so. How do you keep a track of your budget? In a spreadsheet, or just in your mind? How do you adjust your budget for life's surprises?