Staying on track with your personal finances, whether you are single or the head of a household, is greatly aided by a freed budget planner. Vertex42 provides dozens of free budget planners for numerous purposes. One of the most free budget planners is the Family Budget Planner Excel spreadsheet, which can be downloaded at Vertex42’s website. Read on to learn how to use this free budget planner and how it can help you keep track of your personal finances.

Free Budget Planner Features

This free budget planner is designed to help you track your income and expenses for the entire year. At the top of this free budget planner is a handy summary that shows you your total income, total expenses and net (income minus expenses) for each month. Below it are the fields where you actually fill in your income, home expenses, daily living expenses and other costs.

When you fill in the fields on the free budget planner under the  INCOME heading, it will automatically be factored into the summary at the top. The Family Budget Planner has most of the fields you’ll need already typed in, such as Wages & Tips, Interest Income, Mortgage/Rent, Utilities, Groceries, Transportation, etc. If you need additional feeds, the free budget planner also has “Other” fields that you can rename.

Editing the Free Budget Planner

Likewise, you can edit, create and delete categories and subcategories in the free budget planner. It’s important you use row operations, for example, deleting or inserting an entire row, as this will preserve the formula. When inserting a row with this free budget planner, it’s important to insert the row ABOVE the last row in the group or BELOW the first row.

If you are starting your free budget planner on a different month, simply rename the month headings. This will have no effect on the formulas.

One of the best features of this free budget planner is the second tab, which is labeled “Help.” You can use this as a quick reference for using the Family Budget Planner.

Budgeting

To use this free budget planner, enter the expenses that you know and which ones you are projecting, such as gas and grocery costs. Each month, go back and revise with the actual numbers. This will give you a good picture of how you are spending.

All in all, this is one of the easiest to use free budget planners available. It is relatively simple – it lacks features such as a budget calculator for savings or investments, but for the most part, these features are unnecessary for this level of budgeting. The summary feature up top is very intuitive and a great way to get a snapshot of your income and expenses. The fields that come default with the free budget planner are very inclusive as well. If you are looking for a free budget planner that is “ready to go” when you download it but also readily editable and customizable, check out Vertex42’s family budget planner.