All Inclusive Budget Tool

Today I’m excited to share a new tool with anyone who it might help with the task of managing finances.

Proverbs 21:5 simply states “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.” That very clear verse is one of many instructions in the bible that is a basis for our belief that we should have a plan for our finances. It is the basis for budgeting.

I believe one very important detail that is missing from many peoples’ plan is the diligence of tracking the performance of the plan – or the execution. It’s important to know exactly how our plans are working so we know whether or not the plan needs to be tweaked or our behavior needs to be modified. Telling every dollar where to go on paper is only as effective to our financial progress as our actual telling every dollar where to go in reality, and the only way to know if we’re doing a good job is to diligently track that reality. Nothing is more frustrating about financial planning than having a plan and wondering why it isn’t working.  Unless there is a measurement of execution we can’t identify problems with the plan.

There are many tools in the form of softwares or apps available for budgeting and tracking reality. However, many of the people we coach are not using those tools, and when we were hitting rock bottom with our finances we weren’t either. The most effective method of managing financial details for my family and many others has been to simply use a spreadsheet. The only problem is there aren’t many spreadsheets out there that offer a great way to track actual performance along with the budget. For years myself and many other financial coaches using spreadsheets have not had a great way to also coach people to track transactions without referring them to some other app they’re not likely to use. A couple of years ago I posted a solution to this problem, and now it’s getting upgraded, but it is still as simple as a spreadsheet.  Here it is:

All Inclusive Budget Tool (click to download)

There are instructions (that will probably change along the way) inside the spreadsheet. There are extra sheets for tracking debt snowball progress, another for the impact of interest on debt, and others for non-monthly expense planning, and another for mini-budget (special occasion planning). I’ve been calling this an all-inclusive tool because it truly does give most people a place to manage the most common financial details. My hope and prayer is that it serves you well in planning and diligence.

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