One of the most interesting things I've noticed since I started running M$M has been the large number of readers who actually use Excel spreadsheets to create their budgets. I’m not sure why this surprised me as much as it did, but I guess I just thought that most millennials were using the same kind of online budgeting tools that I’m using.
If I had to guess why so many are using Excel budgets, it's probably for the convenience of not having to log in to a website and/or not really wanting to share bank account information that's required for many of the online services.
If you’ve set up your own spreadsheet or use any number of the Excel budget templates you can find online, that’s awesome. I am a big believer in the fact that you have to take your finances into your own hands. That might be spreadsheets, online personal finance software, or maybe you go super old school with pencil and paper– just do what works for you.
The reasons tracking your finances and organizing a budget is so important is that you have to know what’s going on with your money to make any changes with it. I’m talking about changes that will help you pay off debt, make a plan for retirement (especially early retirement), or just save up for something like buying a house.
Knowing what’s going on with your money can be terrifying, but it puts you in charge– and that’s liberating.
If you haven’t figured out a system that works for you, then I have several suggestions for tracking your finances and budget.
I also have put together a list of some of the top budgeting apps (free and paid) that you can find online. Each of these online budgeting tools is a little different, but my favorite is Personal Capital.
Here are the best free Excel budget templates and spreadsheets from M$M readers:
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After hearing my readers talk about their Excel budget templates in my M$M Facebook group I asked them to share their excel budget templates with the rest of us. I heard from a bunch of you and I’m sharing some of my favorites. If you have an Excel budget template you love and don’t mind sharing, feel free to contact me here and send it over.
If you're an avid reader of the site and were wondering– one of the Excel budget templates I have included is the exact one that my two teacher friends used to pay off over $51,000 of debt in 18 months! You can read more about their story here (it's really, really good).
Each of these Excel budget templates has different levels of detail and organization, so hopefull,y there's a little something for everyone.
Want more than these Excel budget templates? Here are the best online budgeting tools:
For those of you who aren't into the Excel thing, there are some other really good budgeting apps and sites that I've come across lately, and I’ve spent some time in the past few months covering them on M$M.
EveryDollar App (free and paid): There's a lot of crossover between Dave Ramsey fans and my site, so this is definitely a popular tool that I'm seeing right now. EveryDollar has a really simple dashboard and uses both the zero-based budget and the baby steps that Dave has become famous for. The base version is free, but you can also get a 15 day free trial of EveryDollar plus.
With the free version of EveryDollar, you will have to manually enter your transactions, which will feel a lot like using an Excel budget template, although it looks pretty different.
The upgraded version allows you to connect your bank accounts to the program in a similar fashion to Mint and Personal Capital. EveryDollar Plus is $99 per year.
Mint (free): This is probably the most popular budgeting software on the market right now, and it is completely free to use. My wife and I have used it on a somewhat regular basis for years.
Mint will connect all of your bank account information and keep it up to date in the dashboard area. Essentially, you can track all of your spending in one place. Just be aware that Mint keeps its service free by placing ads in the program, so many of the “helpful hints” you'll see are sponsored. These are going to be things like credit card offers, but one warning, an ad doesn’t mean you should opt in.
Despite the ads, my favorite part of Mint is how easy it is to use and how much it tells you. It also gives you a complete overview of your finances, from your spending, to setting up a budget, to seeing what’s happening with your investments. I know a lot of people who just use it for the free credit check, which is really nice too.
Read more at: Personal Capital vs. Mint
Personal Capital (free): My wife and I use this along with Mint, but I probably check this one on a daily basis. Personal Capital is a really strong investment and retirement tracking platform, and it's got one of the cleanest and most organized dashboards I’ve seen. There are no ads with PC like there are in Mint, and that’s because they make their money by providing wealth planning services for high net worth individuals. You can connect most bank account information to Personal Capital, and manually enter all of your assets and liabilities if needed on the left column of the app.
I seriously love the retirement planning and net worth tools on Personal Capital, and it’s also my hands down favorite on looks and functionality.
You can read my full Personal Capital review here.
You Need a Budget or YNAB (paid): Similar to EveryDollar, you will get a free trial period with YNAB for 34 days. After the trial period, you are looking at either $5 per month or $50 for the entire year to use the program. YNAB is a little different than most of the other budgeting software programs out there. Rather than focusing on your spending now and in the past, it actually tries to train you to focus on your future budgeting needs. The program wants you to live on the previous month's income instead of using what is rolling in right now.
It was my readers who got me excited about YNAB… some of you guys are like a YNAB cult and I love that excitement about budgeting. The one thing about using YNAB is that to get used to its zero-based budgeting premise, it might take you a few months to get used to. I did go ahead and pay for a subscription because I wanted to spend more time with it after doing my first review.
Read my YNAB vs. Mint comparison here.
Here's what my wife and I use:
Like I said, my wife and I have used both Personal Capital and Mint over the past few years, but we mostly use Personal Capital. Like, I might check on Mint every few weeks, but I check PC daily. It’s like Mint, but on steroids.
It's completely free to use, and it allows me to see all of our money in one place and track our spending and investments. Be sure to check out my full review of Personal Capital and give it a go.
If you're a fan of Mint, you'll probably like Personal Capital too. After playing around with both of those programs, I feel like they supplement each other really well.
PC is stronger on tracking investments and net worth, while Mint is better for the nitty-gritty spending details. Again, this is a free sign-up.
It really doesn't matter what you pick… just use something!
With all of the available free and low-cost budgeting tools out there, there is no longer an excuse to ignore your budgets or your day-to-day spending. Millennials have been stereotyped as lazy fools for a long time, but those days are quickly coming to an end, especially when you consider how many of you are creating your own Excel budget templates.
You are going to make more money in the coming years and will need to have a good handle on everything. It's just going to happen as we all have to really start adulting full-time.
If you didn't sign up to get the free Excel budget templates and spreadsheets above, you really should. I was pretty shocked at some of the creativity and thought that went into the reader budgets that were sent to me!
To all the readers who submitted their Excel budget templates– thank you so much! I know these will help other people get their money right.
Mrs. Picky Pincher says
May 15, 2017 at 8:18 amExactly! People love to talk about what budget-tracking methods are the “best,” but in reality, it’s different for everyone. I like a combination of apps for tracking and my own custom budget sheet for everything else.
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 8:21 amI think that after going through these reader budgets I’ll probably move to something similar. I love Personal Capital, but it does lack on tracking spending.
The Savvy Couple says
May 15, 2017 at 8:30 amLove all the options you have put together for people!
It’s so true you just need to get started. Financial freedom is nearly impossible to achieve without a plan.
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 9:00 amYeah these were all really cool!
Michelle says
May 15, 2017 at 8:38 amYeah, I’m still old school and use an excel template with a tab for each month. I do break it into the same categories as Every Dollar… with a few modifications for my family. My husband is mostly the gatekeeper of updating the items… I just text him the $ amount and line item and he updates. Total fan of a quick weekly check in, it helps us stay the course and modify if there is new information from when we created the budget the week prior to the month starting. I am a fan of getting your finances to a place where you are using last month’s $ to pay for the upcoming month’s expenses / investments. Whatever works for people is what works… the key is having a plan/budget and working it, in a way that works for your lifestyle.
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 9:00 amKinda hard to knock the excel stuff when it’s crazy organized like some of the templates people sent in.
Stephen R. says
May 15, 2017 at 9:04 amThanks for offering these templates! I would like to download them, but I must be missing something here. I signed up, and verified through the link in the confirmation email. The second email with the 7 Keys (pretty awesome stuff there, too!) and other links do not seem to have the budget spreadsheets. If I am missing something, help would be appreciated.
T.I.A.,
-Stephen
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 9:06 amLet me check your email and make sure that you’re signed up in the right place!
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 9:12 amAlright I think I got you taken care of!
Molly says
May 22, 2017 at 9:07 amI am having the same problem. I verify my email and it takes me right back to this blog post! Help a budget lover out:)
Millennial Money Man says
May 22, 2017 at 9:16 amGive it a little time and it should be in your inbox. Usually it takes 5-10 minutes after the redirect, but I’ll make it more clear when you confirm! Let me know if it never comes and I’ll send manually
Bruce says
May 15, 2017 at 9:30 am+1 for EveryDollar.com. It’s a great place to get started on 0 based budgets, but once you get comfortable with the budgeting process and understand how it works, a good option is to customize Google Sheets. The reason being:
1. It’s cloud based
2. Share it with your spouse
3. Both of you can work in it in real time
4. Can chat with each other in the sidebar
5. Can make notes to review later if you have an idea or topic to discuss
6. And of course…. FREE
It helps to keep you and and your spouse on the same page and equally involved in the monthly process. Just my $.02 !
Keep up the good work!!!
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 9:56 amThat’s a great tip!!!
Mike L. says
May 15, 2017 at 9:40 amI use an extremely detailed sheet, showing both weekly income/expenses by pay period, and a running total of the checking balance across the bottom. I also have a monthly budget sheet with income up top, expenses that can be paid off (debt) on the left, expenses that cannot be paid off on the right (recurring), and budget items on the bottom allocating what is leftover to: Food, Fun, Gas/maintenance, savings. Then, the remaining goes back to the column on the left to debt that can be paid off.
I’ve also gotten really good lately at incorporating formulas throughout the sheet, so if a paycheck or expense changes, even by a penny, the entire sheet updates automatically (I have the next 10 years projected).
To say I’m an excel nerd is an understatement, but I couldn’t imagine going thru life without it, and it really helped me to achieve debt freedom earlier this year, along with Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps.
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 9:57 amFeel free to share 🙂
Jeffrey Mohn Jr says
May 15, 2017 at 12:47 pmI do something very similar. I never thought of breaking it down by week / pay period though. I have mine as just a whole month across a row, but breaking it down per week sounds a lot easier when it comes time to project out. I’m only through the end of 2025 though, so you got me beat by a few years!
The Grounded Engineer says
May 15, 2017 at 11:16 amOur family uses Mint. I’ve looked into other options, but I love the FREE aspect of Mint. They tie into our accounts relatively easily, and their budgeting software works for what we need. You can set push email notifications to alert you when you are getting close to exceeding a budget to help you control your spending – this is one of the features I enjoy most about Mint. Also, I’ve used Mint for over 5 years, so I can look back and track my net worth easily.
Danielle @ The Pennies We Saved says
May 15, 2017 at 3:10 pmI use the free Mint app (I’m a big fan of free..lol). I think I may take a peek at Personal Capital and see how well I like it.
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 7:55 pmHaha yeah I like free too
The Tepid Tamale says
May 15, 2017 at 8:23 pmI use Mint for the spending and Personal Capital for the investing analysis. I would love to use Personal Capital only, but I am not sure it is made to handle the monthly budgeting …..
Millennial Money Man says
May 15, 2017 at 10:29 pmIt’s not the best at pure spending analysis for sure. I think supplementing it is the best way to go.
Lee Bugay says
May 17, 2017 at 2:16 pmGreat article! I use a combination of both and recommend the same for my clients. I like the functionality of Mint but also like to use excel to provide more details for my own monthly expenses.
Adriana @MoneyJourney says
May 18, 2017 at 2:12 amI just use the plain ol’ pen & paper method. Add some “modern” excel spreadsheets to the mix every once in a while.
I know I sound like the grandma who’s afraid of technology, but ever since we paid off all our debt (this was a few years back) and learned how to live frugally, our budget became sooo much simpler. Also, putting recurring payments on autopilot helps us stay on track.
Paul Y. says
May 18, 2017 at 9:43 amI entered my email address this morning but never received an email with the content.
Millennial Money Man says
May 18, 2017 at 10:30 amI checked into this – you should have received a “confirm your email” message at 7:47 am. Once you click the “confirm” button, the budgets will be in your inbox shortly!
Josh says
Jul 16, 2017 at 3:26 pmMy wife and I are sitting down to work on a budget. Could you please resend the budget templates. I received them a month ago and accidentally deleted the email and emptied out my trash folder as well. Thank you.