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“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” – Picasso

The page you are about to view contains the explanation of the budget worksheet I have developed over a course of 30 years. It started out as a drawing on a piece of notebook paper, long before there was Microsoft Excel or any number of budgeting worksheets that are available on and offline today. Over the course of the last 30 years I have tried probably over 100 different budget tools, including budgeting tools I have purchased from Comp USA, Circuit City (neither store is in existence anymore), the envelop method, both offline and online versions including using actual envelopes, a list of programs online whose names I have long forgotten let alone remember how they worked. Eventually, I always came back to the program I have developed in Excel and kept polishing it until it turned into the perfect budgeting tool for ME. Does that mean it is the perfect budgeting tool for everyone? No, of course not. But I have found it to be extremely easy to use, efficient and it helps me keep track of my checkbook, budget and helps me project my financial standing for the next 52 weeks. I have probably spent over $2000.00 dollars over the past 30 years on over 100 different budgeting tools, some costing me as much as $350.00 dollars and I always came back to mine because I found it to work better than anything I found out on the market. Now, I am making it available to you for the price of five dollars per week ($5.00). If you want to participate in the entire workshop, you will have the option to purchase it directly from my Patreon site for $40.00 for the entire 6 week course. That is the course material, the workbook and the video on how to use it!

I hope you will find it as useful for you and your family as I do.

Purchase your New Budget Worksheet!

Now that you have purchased the budget tool, let's talk about the exciting world of budgeting. Specifically, how my budget works and how it can work for you!

OK... well maybe it is not exciting...

But it is oh so necessary in order to be able to project your income, expenses, your bills, etc. Also, how would you be able to know if you can save up for a new car or a down payment on a house if you don't know what kind of funds you are working with?

In order to get started, I am going to assume that you have purchased my budget tool and have it open on a computer in front of you. Although it is possible to use a mobile device, I am going to VERY STRONGLY recommend that you don't. The amount of data you are juggling will look overwhelming on a mobile phone. You should use a desktop, laptop or at the very least, some sort of tablet to get started.

Naturally, the next part is your expenses

This is the part where you put in your... expenses. These would be your mortgage, your food, your savings (yes, savings is an expense) your utilities, your ... Starbucks... ugh... your vacation fund, your car emergency fund, your child's college contribution fund, etc. Please try to have an accurate list of your expenses available when you do this. Although you can always add to the list if you miss something, the budget will show you a false level of fund availability that will need to be adjusted later if you miss something. Some of the most common things people miss are gasoline, public transportation costs, food outings, Starbucks (there it is again) occasional visits to ... your favorite store, confectionary purchases, etc. The end goal of this budget is simple. Your bank account should match at all times, your budget accounting. If there is a difference, either you spent too much money on something, you went over budget, or you forgot something, or... if on a positive side, you have more in your checking account than your budget says you should, YAY, but still balance your budget. Only the federal government is allowed to spend without balancing their budget. You and I, on a somewhat fixed income every month, we don't have that luxury. Again, don't worry if this seems like a lot - we will go through the budget in a few easy steps on the video and I am certain you will find it as easy to use as I do.

The first thing you will need...

... is a list of all your income sources. And by ALL your income sources, I mean ALL your income sources. On the budget worksheet you have 5 different income sources you can input in the 5 columns, corresponding to FIVE weekly amounts. Notice that this budget is NOT monthly, or weekly and it has 5 weeks on each worksheet not 4 as most monthly budgets would have. The reason for that is simple. When I was exploring budgets, all the ones I found were in monthly or 4-week increments. But this was a problem because after the month was over, I always had to scramble to figure out how I will pay my rent or mortgage the next month because the budgeting tool didn't go over into the next month! So, when I wrote my budget, I did it in 5-week segments - this ALWAYS shows me what the next month looked like right off the bat. No surprises - at least, no preventable surprises. Only emergencies, such as flat tires... but more on that later.

So, in the income segment, start by imputing your incomes. Don't worry, if this looks confusing, there will be a video on the bottom of this page where we will go through the segments in detail. To start, I just want you to see the worksheet and get used to the outline. So start by putting in your incomes, such as your and your SO's paychecks, any second jobs you may have, rental income if any, and any other income, such as side jobs, etc.

Once your have all your incomes...

Start by putting in the DATE in the first column where you currently see "Friday, April 8, 2022". The date format will be month, day, year. For example, May 01, 2024 would be 05/01/2024. This is the only date you will need to ever input into this budget because the rest of them will be calculated automatically - in weekly increments. So the day you input will be either A) the date when you want your budget to start, such as ... May 01, 2024... OR what I would recommend is the FRIDAY closest to the very next pay date for either of your incomes. For instance, if you have 3 incomes listed, one for you, one for your spouse and a 3rd income AND your spouse will get paid next chronologically, then the date you want to put will the FRIDAY closest to their payday. This way, the dates you see will always be Fridays in the budget and create a nice, organized date structure for you to follow.

NEXT...

Label your incomes on the top of the box - in my example I put Income 1, Income 2, Income 3 but certainly you can put whatever is easier for you. For example, you can put your name or your spouses' name or the company or whatever. PLEASE NOTE - you have 5 different income sources you can use. Most of us will only have 2 - one for us, one for our spouse if we are lucky enough to be married. Perhaps one extra income, such as a part time job. The other columns will be helpful when you have some months where you have occasional incomes, such as a tax refund, or Christmas money or an inheritance check from your mean uncle Morty, who finally passed - God rest his soul. These are incomes you get occasionally and they would go in column 4 or 5.

Now then. Once you have your incomes listed, you want to list the amount of the income corresponding to the CLOSEST date when you anticipate the income to take place. For example, if you get paid bi-weekly and your next paycheck is this coming Friday, you will put in column one next to the Friday date your anticipated income. So far so good? OK.

You want to do this for the entire 5 weeks right off the bat. You will notice that each column will be added up for you, so for example in some months you get 2 paychecks and in other segments you get 3, it will be added up for you. Similarly, if you look over at the column in yellow, where it says TOTALS, the budget will add up all your weekly incomes for you. This will be important once we get to the expenses because the budget will automatically move your weekly income into your expenses column for that week and subtract them for you so you will always know what you have to balance your checking account to.

Aright, now that you have your list of expenses

Now that you have put in your income and you have your list of expenses, I want you to notice that when you enter your income, your weekly total income will automatically transfer to the expenses section for the corresponding week. This is your available funds for that week - once we proceed to the next month, you will have a carryover (hopefully) and this will be added to your available income to spend THAT WEEK. For instance, notice that in the example above, for the first week there is an available income of $1450.00 and for week two it is $2450.00. As you start entering your bills to pay, this amount will be reduced by the amount of the bills. What you have left over after all your bills are paid that week, is your positive balance. If the number is NEGATIVE - that means you have spent more than your available funds and you are negative. This has to be fixed either by shifting a bill to the next week if possible, to next payday or ... you need more income. There is no other way to fix that.

Here you can see the full picture better. So you have your income, it has been imputed into the income section, you have your list of your expenses and you put the names of the expenses in the column under PAYEES. In this example you see a mortgage, Gasoline - car -1 , car 2, etc. Next to the payees you see your expense for the next 5 weeks - OK. Let's say that again, because this is important. Very important. So - let's say you gas up your car and you spend $50.00 per instance. That means, your 5-weekly cost for gasoline is $250.00 (in the example it is 100). In the column next to GASOLINE you will put 250.00 for your 5-weekly total. Next. You will notice in the column next to the total monthly projected cost, is your first week's column. This is where you will divide your total projected cost by 5 and you got your weekly expenditure. In the picture it shows $50.00 - this is how much you can spend THIS WEEK on gasoline.

Finally. there are 3 dates - 4/1/22 4/3/22 and 4/5/22 in the example, in which columns you can put your ACTUAL spending. So if you buy gasoline for 45.00 dollars on 4/3/22 using this example, you will put in $45.00 in the column corresponding to the date and the line item for gasoline. Again, this is an overview. There is a video coming up where you will see live examples. These are to get you introduced to the budget.

Here is why it is for 5 weeks and not 4. First, to ensure that there is a transition to the next month - always. Second. It forces me to stop and think about my budget. Budgeting should take some time and some thought should be put into it. So many online budgeting tools try to sell the idea that budgeting can be done between an outing with friends to Happy Hour and getting off work on Friday afternoon by some smiling, happy go lucky people who, in the next scene after "balancing their checkbooks on the run on their mobile phones" are happily swilling drinks at a local tavern after a 3 minute glance at their "budgets". Banks do the same thing. Try to make it so simple and so easy... well, if you don't have funds to balance because you spent all your money while smiling happily with people at happy hour, then there is no issue, right? There is no money, there is no budget needed.

But. For people who ... live in the real world... this is not realistic. So, having a 5-week budget essentially forces you and me to stop and to think about our budget, to think about our expenses and not just throw numbers willy nilly around between shots at a watering hole.

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