monthly expenses spreadsheet for yearly taxes

True Expenses - variable or longer term expenses - Car insurance, trash fees, home and car repairs, clothing, Christmas gifts etc. Living Expenses - fixed or monthly recurring bills - Mortgage, daycare, utilities, etc. The main categories are broken down as follows: So how does everyone structure their budgets? What kinds of accounts are used for what purposes? What percentage of take-home pay gets allocated to what purpose? But my big question centers around what kinds of accounts are used for different parts of the budget. I'm a big fan of the 50/20/30 framework (Of take-home pay, 50% for necessities, 20% for savings/investments, 30% for lifestyle - although I prefer a more even balance if not an outright flip of the 20/30). But this is, of course, in the context of what the entire monthly budget will look like. My fiancee and I are looking to buy a house, and I'm fixated on what the monthly payment will look like when we move in. I'm looking to get a general sense of how Bogleheads structure their monthly budgets. Regardless of the 'notes', I find that having a big summit each year gives us take-aways that we can just reference in the back of our minds throughout the year Notes are taken, and I reference the ideas occasionally when I'm sitting at the desk on a Saturday morning looking at financial things. Often it's me opining that as soon as we get one kid out of school we need to ramp up both retirement and taxable contributions. 'wow, we spent a lot on groceries last year should we add another pasta night to save a little?' or 'boy, that vacation was pricey but I really enjoyed it let's do something smaller this year but we really should go back there after son is out of college' type things. It's usually pretty obvious what we need to do to save money, and we make a value choice at the budget meeting. We have never categorized expenses an 'necessities' or other. We don't 'track' on a monthly basis, so it's gleaned from various year-end credit card summaries, and check registers.

They are also color-coded to be 'my' expense, 'wife's' expense, or 'joint' expense (a contrivance, as obviously it's all one pot) On the far right is an 'actual' column, where we forensically enter that year's actual spending. If the expense is typically a monthly one (mortgage) that cell is bolded, and the other 2 columns sum from the bolded entry. The 8 pages have 3 columns monthly, quarterly, and annual totals for each category. I don't track investments on this sheet I have another one for that. They sum on a 'home' page that includes income information, and basic metrics about debt reduction and cash savings. I have a custom spreadsheet that has 8 category pages:

My wife and I do a 'forensic' budget, usually in February or March of the following year. (helpful on pay raises to see new amount of excess to allocate to savings)įinally, a breakdown of the percent dedicated to each bucket: Things like electricity are updated annually, based on previous years' spending/anticipated changes. Non-highlighted are adjusted as they change, insurance renewal, etc. we do have an ultra high savings rate, hovering around 70%.įrom this, we then track monthly expenses, manually, for the highlighted categorized on another sheet.

Monthly expenses spreadsheet for yearly taxes