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Creation of a budget planner is a convenient and easy way to get your finances under control. There are a lot of free budget worksheets that you can find online and that are very user friendly. Also if you have the Microsoft Office Suite you can get free templates.

Also you could look into something like Microsoft Money which is management software and you can design and track your budget that way.

When you decide on what you want for your budgeting software and go about the design you should focus it on 6 main categories:

1. Total gross income
2. Total take home pay (net income)
3. Monthly debts
4. Monthly car and travel expenses
5. Misc family spending

Your household expenses are going to include things like your rent or mortgage payments, property and liability insurance, utilities, taxes, other payments. Also you’ll have your automotive expenses which are going to be your car insurance, gasoline costs and planned maintenance like your oil changes, rotations, etc…

Your debt payments will be things like any credit card loans, personal loans and any other static payment you have to make on a monthly basis.

You’ll need to list out any of the other misc. expenses and some examples of those are:

• Childcare or school costs
• Clothing
• Groceries
• Family entertainment expenses like cable, magazines, papers, etc…
• Medical expenses, both family and vet
• Any club or association dues
• Life and health insurance
• Investments
• Vacations
• Gifts
• Haircuts and other personal care expenses

Adding up your total monthly income at the top of your budget planner and then adding up your total monthly expenses for each category and then subtract it and then you’ll have your total leftover net income per month. This is going to be able to give you a good idea on where you’re at with your budget and where you need to make some changes and if there are places where you need to switch some money around.