my budgeting system

16 Mar, 2026

On my recommendations page, one thing I rave about is budgeting. You can go there if you want to read why I think it fucking rocks, and you can stay here if you want to learn how I do it.

There’s a lot of ways to budget. I only know the one I use, which is basically “giving every dollar a job”. I learned about it from a book called You Need a Budget, which has an associated app by the same name. I tried using the app, and it wasn’t quite right for me so I built a spreadsheet for myself instead.

THE FORMAT

In my spreadsheet are two key boxes: One for my bank account balance, and one for how much of that is available for budgeting.

The rest of the sheet contains

• my monthy bills
• expenses (this includes things like gas, eating out and an open, ambiguous, “fun”)
• other less regularly occuring things I like to have money squirreled away for (household items, my cat Moon, gifts, getting a massage)
• and the money I plan to transfer to savings or use for my credit card statement

For each bill or expense there’s a column containing

• cost
• date due
• where the money comes from if it’s an automatic charge (bank or credit card)
• amount budgeted
• amount needed

For everything else there’s columns for a target amount and the amount budgeted.

I have two amount budgeted and amount needed columns for bills and expenses, one for this month and one for next month, and I use this sheet in tandem with a high yeild savings account (through Ally Bank, although I've heard SoFi is good too) that lets me sort my money into buckets. That’s where I keep track of how much I have for longer term, higher ticket things like my emergency fund or my business taxes.

THE USE

How I use it is so simple and honestly kind of fun.

When I get payed I put my new bank account balance in my balance box, look at how much I have to budget, and then use that amount to fill out the spreadsheet.

The budgetable amount updates itself every time I set money aside because it operates based on an equation that subtracts the sum of all I’ve budgeted from my bank account balance, so I just plug and chug until I hit zero, then try not to spend more than I’ve set aside.

I don’t track my spending much, but usually before I update my budget with a new paycheck I’ll do what I call “reconciling my budget”. This entails putting my pre-paycheck, post-spending bank account balance in the balance box, which turns the amount in the budgatable box from 0 to some negative number. Then I go through the sheet and take out the money I’ve spent until the budgatable amount is 0 again, using my bank statement to approximate.

For the first paycheck of the month, this usually looks like me zeroing out all bills I’ve payed (rent, health insurance, etc.) and also taking out whatever I’ve spent on groceries or gas or having fun. Sometimes I’ll find out I’ve overspent in a certain category, so I’ll move around the money I have set aside for the month to compensate for that, then behave accordingly for the rest of the month. At the end of the month, If I have money left over, I’ll move it somewhere else (next month, whichever “other” item could use a boost, or my savings).

Reconciling my budget in this way allows me to stay aware of and make adjustments to my spending without forcing me to fixate on it all the time.

THE GOAL

depends on who you are. For me, the small goals have been

• to be using this months paychecks for next months bills and expenses (so the budgeted column for this month on my spreadsheet is always full at the start of the month, and the budgeted column for next month is what I’m filling out as money comes in through the month). This also translates to "not living paycheck to paycheck"
• to build/have an emergency fund that can cover at least 3 months worth of bills and expenses
• to build/have an emergency fund that can cover random things like pet bills or medical expenses
• to be saving for retirement (blegh)

Meanwhile, the big goal has been

• To be able to feel secure and free. To have my bases solidly covered and know they’re covered and therefore be able to have fun without guilt and uncertainty. To be able to save for trips and my future. To be able to adequately care for myself and those I love. And, to know if my ability to do any of those things is at risk.

My budget has helped me significantly with these goals.

THE BUDGET

If you want, here's link to a basic version of the budget I use which you can copy and paste into your own google doc and then customize as you please. It also includes a savings calculator to help break down long term goals. The only thing that won't translate is the conditional formatting which turns your needed column into a different color, but you can do that yourself with a quick google search if you care. I use an if >0 equation.

If you want help building a budget, let me know. It would make my day.

I’ll update this with pictures once I learn how to do that.

#money #words