Home Budget Template

A Home Budget Template provides the user a route to decide how to manage household finance and help them properly allocate or plan the spending over a period, generally a month or a year. It is one of the best-organized ways to manage our household finances. Through this standard format, every household can have specific fields to enter required details to track and manage their expenses against whatever they earn.

A home budget template offers a standard set of fields that every household requires to fill in details to check how much they need to spend and where. Based on what they earn, they prepare this budget for their household requirements. This way, the finances remain streamlined and organized.

The household budget template captures all the sources of income one has and also the spending. It sets up an initial budget balance and also gives a projection of the end balance, which expects to be there after deductions of all the expenses from the income.

Let us see how to maintain details in the home budget template efficiently:

Part 1:

Here, we need to enter the set budget/projected balance we plan to allocate from our regular source of income. The total income is the addition of income from various sources. The total expenses take the addition of all the possible expenses in one’s lifestyle. Finally, the net gives us the difference between expenses and income. A positive net means income is more than expenses, and a negative net means expenses are more than income earned. Here, we calculate the difference between projected and actual income and expense. Finally, the net arrives, which is either positive or negative.

Part 2:

Here, we take into account all the income-related numbers. A person can have multiple sources of income. We capture all the possible sources of income and add them up as the total income. The other section can interest deposits or dividends earned from investment and additional recurring/non-recurring income flow.

Part 3:

Here in this part, all the expenses related to the home/house get captured. It takes care of the home loan, and the EMI paid to the bank. Also, expenses like electricity, gas, water, telephone, and cable are captured here. This section also captures the internet, an essential requirement for every home now. The repairs spent on the home or maintenance amount spent over the property and the property tax paid are also shown here. Any miscellaneous amount spent against property is also captured in this section.

Part 4:

This section captures all the premiums and investment-related fees we must pay for our investment needs. It includes allocating funds towards investments from our savings and paying off retirement premiums and other required savings plans. It also means the creation of emergency funds. The complete investment needs are taken care of here, which includes retirement planning premiums to the contingency fund.

Part 5:

This part is majorly related to the loans or line of credit involved with one. Today's credit card plays a significant role in everyone's life, and all the payments made towards credit are captured here. In addition, any student loan or payment towards alimony is also noted in this section.

Part 6:

It is the most common expense for every monthly budget. A set amount is allocated for groceries and other needs like clothing, education, salon, etc. These are more or like stable and can be comfortably decided based on the consumption rate. Here, we take care of all clothing and salon-related expenses too.

Part 7:

Entertainment is a part of everyone's life. It has been seen that an individual will spend a certain amount of his earnings every month on it. It includes movies, travel, sports, hobbies, etc. Travel plays a necessary expense in the life of every individual in the US/UK as it has been seen people like traveling a lot. While exploring places, they spent a lot of their savings on it.

Part 8:

In this section, all the needs related to children are taken care of, including their schooling, clothing, tuition, toys, etc. It forms a significant source of expense for all household budgets since the cost of raising a child has become very high in the US/UK.

Part 9:

Here, all the expenses related to raising and maintaining pets are considered. In addition, the entire medical expenses related to pets are also captured here.

Part 10:

This section is specific to the amount spent against commuting requirements. Transportation plays a crucial role in moving from place to place, and a significant amount goes for a regular commute. Whether a personal or public vehicle, a certain amount of fixed cost is always allocated monthly towards commuting. For example, one must pay monthly EMIs or the fuel cost or repairs and maintenance on buying a car. Nowadays, even parking is costly. Thus, every day, we shed an amount of fee towards parking, which has also been captured in this template. The car insurance part for private vehicles has also been shown in the template.

Part 11:

This part captures any amount spent over regular subscriptions every month. It is prevalent today for everyone to have at least one subscription to digital OTT movies or magazines. Thus, the monthly amount spent on these subscriptions is captured here.

Part 12:

Personal health plays a significant part in our life. With increasing age, the cost associated with health also gets higher. Medical insurance premiums are standard in every house as every individual these days plans themselves for a secure life and protects themselves with medical insurance plans. Also, life insurance premiums are included in this part. The standard doctor fees or amount spent on medication and treatment are also captured in this section as monthly health-related expenses.

Part 13:

A significant chunk of the budget for all households in the US/UK is generally allocated for travel. It is because they love traveling and exploring places. Thus, this should be a significant part of their expenses for the household.

Part 14:

One should capture all insurance-related expenses here. That is because it forms a mandatory part of the household expenses for future security and planning.

Part 15:

Here in this section, any amount spent on gifts or donations is captured. It is common in our lifestyle to attend occasions where we give the recipient as a token of appreciation. A certain amount is always spent on this and should be a part of our monthly budget. Also, people, these days, donate for two reasons. One is genuinely donating to help others, and the other is getting tax exemption from people every month to allocate a particular part of their earnings towards donations to get exempt from a higher tax bracket. Thus, one must include these scenarios in our monthly budget template.

Part 16:

Finally, any miscellaneous ones left include here when all the expenses are captured. It also includes postage-related and other petty expenses, which one can note monthly. It is the final section of our monthly household budget template.

There are free home budget template available to help manage the household expenses and income of every family. The primary aim of using the template is to capture the entire income source available for a family and match it with all the expenses which a family has to bear monthly. It includes both recurring and non-recurring expenses.

The resultant or the difference obtained is compared with a budget amount set at the start of the month, and finally, one arrives at a net. Therefore, the template is very useful when one needs to know a family’s cash inflow and outflow.

There is a series of steps that a household budget maker must follow while using the template, thereby making the budget planning process more efficient and effective. Let us check some common steps to using a monthly home budget template efficiently:

• The first step is to list the earnings or income. This can include income coming from all sources or family members. The incomes are then added to obtain the total income figure for the household.
• The next step is to list all expenses. These expenses belong to different categories, including utilities, food, transportation, housing, insurance, debt obligations, and miscellaneous.
• Thirdly, household owners then need to subtract the total expenses from the total income. The result should ideally be zero. However, it is always better if one obtains a positive number more than zero as a result. It would reflect how efficiently they are managing the finances with extra money being left over every month for further savings. In case, the result obtained is in negative and one obtains a number less than zero, it indicates overspending. However, cutting the expenses can help them achieve zero-based budgeting.

Let us consider the following instances to check how this home budget template helps plan a house’s monthly budgets:

Example 1

Jenny, the declared budget planner of the Davis family, used to note down the expenses and income of the household manually in a diary. However, one of her friends told her about the online free home budget template where she can maintain her monthly budget while customizing it per her household requirements.

Based on her friend’s advice, she used a monthly home budget template available online and customized it as per her household or family income and expenses. In the income section, she added the income from her bakery business, her husband’s salary, and her son’s stipend.

For expenses, she categorized the amount into – utilities expense, transportation expense, food expense, loan liabilities, a few other expenses here and there. After subtracting, she found that the family was overspending on certain things and hence, they decided to be careful the next month. Jenny realized how easy it was to plan the budget and take care of extra spendings by using the templates than maintaining a dairy to track the same.

Example 2

Below is sample template that reflects the standard format that most of the households use to maintain their budget plan:

Source

There are multiple advantages of using the online free downloadable templates. Listed below are the reasons that make users prefer these free templates over manual home budget template in Excel. Let us have a look at them:

• Tracking expenses against the total income is easier. As a result, one can identify whether they are capably controlling their expenses or overspending on certain things. In case of latter, they cut their expenses to ensure the expenses are in accordance with the income.
• Customization feature makes household budget makers open to shifting to new having new fields, if so required. When one starts using these templates, they come across requirements, which might not be included in the downloaded version. Users, in such scenarios, can add required fields for accurate and more efficient planning and maintenance of budget.
• These templates help making respective calculations easier, thereby ensuring household owners make better financial decisions for their homes.
• Being able to track total income and total expense allows users to keep track of their financial flow every month and hence they can plan the outflow accordingly, thereby making sure they are prepared for any financial emergencies that may arise in future.