My 50-20-30 Budget Template

Here’s the budgeting template we use. It’s nothing fancy and I’ve cleared out our entries to give you a clean slate to work with. Just save a copy on your computer.

We use the 50-20-30 principle to budget and it’s not super rigid, but allows a framework to work from. The main concept is to try to keep your fixed expenses (e.g. mortgage, gas, groceries, childcare, etc) at or below 50%, financial goals (e.g. retirement savings, paying off student loan, saving for college) at least 20%, and then your flexible spending (a.k.a. disposable income or discretionary spending) at or below 30%. 

The best way to use the template is to fill in:

• Income: Column B– the only cell you really need to fill in for the rest of the spreadsheet to work is Gross Monthly Pay “before taxes and retirement are taken out”. The other cells in Column B help to give you a snapshot of your finances at a point in time. 
• Fixed Expenses: Column D – estimate monthly totals for these or your own categories
• Financial Goals: Column G– estimate monthly totals for these or your own categories
• Flexible Spending; Column J– this is the column that doesn’t really need you to itemize since it will automatically calculate what you have left each month after you pay for all fixed expenses and saved for financial goals. Cell J8 is the best datapoint. It tells you how much you can comfortably spend each month and/or save for other goals.