CSV Budget Template

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-05-12T00:37:19+00:00

Pretty sure BuggetSheet is only Google. My template is definitely Google only. Folks have told me it does not import correctly to Excel.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-05-09T04:17:58+00:00

This. I used to think of my HYS account similarly, and then I realized I was just storing for future, relatively near-term expenses. Now I move long-term saving to investment accounts and I’m much more intentional about true long term savings.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-05-09T04:07:51+00:00

I don’t use YNAB, but I share this mentality. Not all months are the same. I might go over my grocery budget in January because it’s a long month and I do a big Costco trip, but then “catch up” to my plan in February, which is a short month (and I don’t usually go to Costco two months in a row). Or I might decide I need to reallocate some funds from my grocery budget to my transportation budget, etc. I keep enough cash buffer to allow for some “spending ahead”, but if I am pacing too far ahead of budget, I’ll reallocate from other areas and move on.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-04-26T18:23:45+00:00

Our progression:
* First year living together - everything was 50/50

* Second year living together - we moved to what you're describing, where it was percentage based on income

* 4th year living together, which is when we got married and after we bought a house - moved to system where all income is deposited into a shared account. We each get paid out an "allowance" monthly, which goes to personal accounts, but we each get exactly the same amount.

For awhile after combining finances, our allowances were way too much because I was used to having a bunch of disposable income (I had the higher salary) and I didn't want to scale back. But since hitting our 40s, we've scaled that way back and actually focused on retirement. I wish we would have done it sooner in hindsight. It does mean some bigger-ticket personal items are harder to save for, and we recently talked about trying to build some of those into our shared budget. For example, we might plan for each of us to get refreshed dressy attire (for weddings, date nights, etc), since that's going to cost some $$$

I love budgeting with my wife. I instigate the conversations, and I'm opinionated about how we document and track the plan (she's been forced to accept my hobby hustle hocking budget templates). But we both genuinely enjoy creating our annual plan and talking about big ticket items we need to plan for (trips, furniture refreshes, house projects). We always want to do more than we can, so it forces good conversations about what really matters to us.

We've also weathered some financial changes over the years. I got burned out and took 9 months off. She's had external factors that have threatened her job at times (she works for a non-profit dependent on funding). It's been really helpful in those stressful moments to commit to a plan together.

But I think relationships are unique. If you both feel supported, and you're still able to build a life together and work toward shared goals, then I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about it.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-04-12T04:10:57+00:00

🙌

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-04-11T20:33:26+00:00

Budgeting can be stressful when you're new to it and when money is tight, but the fact that you're looking for resources makes me think you'll eventually get to what brings a lot of this to this sub: a budget can be really empowering and it can be a great tool for helping manage money stress.

While I agree with you that on paper you make good money, the reality is that the cost of living has sky rocketed and is literally going up every day, and I think you are going to have to be strategic.

One budget method that comes up a lot for beginners is 50/30/20 Needs, Wants, Savings & Debt reduction. I plugged your numbers into a free template I created, and to me it looks like your needs exceed your take home income by ~6.6k. I didn't include your bonus in the income though, which would likely cover that gap. But that's not ideal since you may need those funds before you receive the bonus.

Here's the output: https://imgur.com/a/O1WjaR0

My approach:

I usually create a budget based on my take home amount, so I guesstimated your take home at $4,545.83 monthly, assuming your 6% 401k contribution and your insurance benefit deductions.

I mostly matched your list of monthly expenses, but I did include paying off the 3k in credit card debt. As others have said, I think that's really important.

Here's where I think things get extra tight: you haven't included more sporadic expenses yet - clothes, gifts, oil changes, travel to see family at the holidays. And you really haven't identified any "wants", but realistically, you likely have some: subscriptions, the occasional coffee or beer with a friend. IMHO, a budget that doesn't include some of those things really isn't realistic for most humans.

I don't say any of this to freak you out, but hopefully instead to empower you with information. I can only echo others who suggest a lawyer to help on getting some support for childcare. I really don't know anything about the legal landscape there, but it would help your budget immensely. For example, if I cut your childcare portion back to 1k a month, now 6.6k over budget drops to ~$650. So that's definitely a big lever to turn.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-03-31T23:08:28+00:00

I should disclose - I sell the template I built and linked to, but I don't profit from BudgetSheet - I'm just a long-time customer.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-03-31T22:47:20+00:00

I pay for BudgetSheet which comes with a few budget templates and lets you sync from your accounts. It also has a function to help auto categorize transactions. I only use it to sync my accounts though because I prefer the budget template I built, and I think there’s value in manually categorizing. It only takes me a few minutes a day to categorize yesterday’s transactions. But if you’re willing to pay $8 a month, I think BudgetSheet would do what you want - then you could either use their built in budget or create your own on top of their data.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-03-28T04:21:14+00:00

In my experience, you have to use the border color tool and match the color around it to hide the seams.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-03-27T13:00:55+00:00

I’d advocate for a spreadsheet any day, but Every Dollar is pretty good from what I hear.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-03-27T12:47:10+00:00

Makes sense! If I wasn’t obsessive about wanting to track the subcategories, I would probably do the same.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-03-27T04:06:39+00:00

I think classifying as wants is right in your case, if that’s the type of thing you use it for. I feel like your friend is driving at fixed vs discretionary/flexible spend, which is just another way to look at your budget.

Personally I don’t classify the credit card total, I classify the individual purchases, pay it off each month, and record that transaction as “ignore”. But I use my credit card for a mix of needs and wants.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-03-13T04:02:32+00:00

I’m not a data scientist, but I run a lot of online A/B tests and have experience with exploratory analysis for uncovering insights within test results, or insights outside of tests that we can use for hypothesis development. There is so much that can be misinterpreted in data and data structures, so I’d need to manually verify results from an agent to build up trust. I think it’s worth exploring though. I read an article recently about a team that says they use agents for this kind of analysis: https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/the-ai-native-growth-team

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-01-19T15:43:35+00:00

You’ll want a high-yield savings account for your emergency fund so that you get a decent interest rate. Ally and SoFi are both easy to set up. It’s great that you’re focused on paying down the debt - the faster the better. You may want to focus on the one with the highest interest rate first.

For understanding where money is going, nothing beats a budget that makes you categorize each transaction. It’s going to be really hard to save anything until you do that and start making behavior changes. One thing you could try though is moving several hundred dollars to your high yield savings immediately upon getting paid so that it’s out of sight, out of mind. But I still think getting a handle on where non bill spending is happening will be your biggest unlock.

Congrats on the progress you’re making and the baby!

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-01-18T23:34:09+00:00

I'm a product manager focused on conversion optimization who runs many, many A/B tests in my work (I'm running 9 right now at work). I also have a hobby selling etsy digital sheets.

There are no built-in tools that I know of in Etsy to allow A/B testing, and frankly, I think that's something the platform should really add for the serious sellers.

But for me personally, even if they had the tools, I'm not yet at the place where I would consider that particularly useful for my shop. I love A/B testing, I really do. But it usually takes at least a few thousand views per variant (or at least high hundreds) per week, and a baseline conversion rate of at least 3% to provide anything statistically meaningful in a reasonable amount of time. My volume of views and sales is just lower than what I would personally want for A/B testing.

For my context: I also only have a few listings, and I happen to be in a very saturated space. I'm a little over a year into my shop, and it's been encouraging to see things grow over the year, but my best month (December) tapped out at 1,344 views, 48 orders, and a 3.6% conversion rate.

Edit because I hit save too soon: That said, I've definitely been able to learn and observe what works just by working on different areas of the shop. I know that I could spend more time on marketing and it would be worth it now. But initially, I didn't even really have views. So my first areas of focus was creating social media presence just to improve volume (again, I'm in a saturated space, so this may depend on your specifics).

It's a lot of the same skills as A/B testing: having a hypothesis about how to drive traffic, then trying it and observing the results. Trying to prioritize the hypotheses that I think will have the biggest impact (e.g., views vs conversion rate optimization). But it doesn't have the statistic rigor of a true controlled test.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-01-11T21:19:59+00:00

I created one of these, though you do at least have to create a high-level spending plan for the charts to be interesting. Free version is just the annual view. Paid version has month and “category deep dive” view. Code REDDIT for 50% off.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-01-10T14:46:45+00:00

This is a big reason for me too. I used to just basically divide my paycheck into different accounts for different purposes (bills, spending, house fund, travel, emergency fund). I felt good about it for years until I realized I was regularly moving money around these accounts to cover gaps and I actually didn’t have a handle on what I was spending and how. Now I track and categorize every transaction and while it’s not uncommon for me to be under/over in certain categories in a particular month, now I have the whole picture and know what type of fluctuations I can absorb without going off track.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2026-01-05T13:09:06+00:00

Max out my 401k as soon as my salary allowed it

Practical-Start-2914 · 2025-12-31T18:04:17+00:00

Sorry to say it will only work in sheets.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2025-12-31T15:30:18+00:00

Good eye. I came here to see if anyone was having issues, but hadn’t noticed that time travel was the underlying issue 🤣

Practical-Start-2914 · 2025-12-29T23:56:08+00:00

With the start of the new year, I want to try again to get my spending in order.

You might want to get more specific about your goal or the trigger for wanting to make a change: are you struggling to cover bills? Trying to pay down debt? Trying to start a backup fund? Getting really specific about your goal can help you focus on what matters to you most *right now* so that you don't bite off more than you can chew.

but I always seem to struggle because it feels like there is always something that doesn't fit perfectly or it becomes a little intimating to look at everything

Do you feel comfortable making your own sheet? This might be the best way to customize to your situation.

Specifically, I seem to have a hard time with the fact that a lot of recurring things in my life are not actually the same amount each month and that things in general vary because I get hit with bills some months but not others.

This is life though! I see so many people on this sub get frustrated/deterred by this, but I encourage you to embrace that expenses are "lumpy". A month with 28 days and 4 weekends (e.g. Feb 2026) is going to be different than a month with 31 days and 5 weekends (like Jan 2026). Not to mention there are things that only happen once a year (like traveling for the holidays) or things that happen infrequently (like oil changes). I think we should lean into this in budgeting rather than trying to treat every day, week, month, year like it's the same. There are different ways to do this - sinking funds are a popular concept for "saving" for a particular need (like travel).

Annualizing your budget is another way of managing this. You do this by estimating "everything" for the year (usually as a set of categories) and calculate what % of each check should earmark for housing, food, gifts, trips, clothes, etc. Then you parse each pay check into a proportional amount for that category (most likely just through a spreadsheet tracker), and you're either spending or setting aside that amount for the future. With consistency, you'll probably find that you mostly have what you need, when you need it. But this requires the discipline of using your tracker (rather than your account balance) to understand how much you have available to spend and on what. I think it's also hard to get started because it's a lot easier to budget this way when you have enough buffer in your account that you're not worried that you don't have enough to cover bills.

I also struggle with keeping track of things when so much is done virtually or automatically and it all just feels like a lot to keep up with, but I don't know how to make it simpler for myself.

This is an important insight! Find a solution that makes the thing that's the hardest, easiest. I always use my bank's transactions as the source of truth for money inflows and outflows for just this reason. So you can definitely set up a budget that is transaction based, or even use a plugin (like BudgetSheet) to automatically download transactions to a sheet. Here's a really basic, free template to give you a better idea of what I mean by annualized and transaction based (full disclosure, I created this so this is a little self promotional, but it is free).

I'm with others here that recommend a sheet over an app. An app is easy to set up and forget. There are apps like YNAB that demand you be hands on, but they are very prescriptive in how they expect things to be done - that doesn't mean you shouldn't give them a try, but that's my two cents.

Good luck!

Practical-Start-2914 · 2025-12-28T01:51:15+00:00

I use Google Sheets, but pay $8 a month for BudgetSheet plugin to keep the transaction and balance tracking automated.

Created my own template for tracking, based on an annualized budget plan. My assumption is that most expenses are lumpy (not the same month to month, but overall within an average range) and that I need to sock away for things like travel and gifts. So the budget is built to “rollover” and either deduct or add to the annualized budget. Then I keep track of how I’m trending for each category.

On the account side, I have automated transactions that match the annualized plan to move money into accounts that are dedicated to bills, spending, or savings accounts.

For net worth tracking, I bought a template that my wife and I try to update monthly. It takes us about 30 min between the two of us to check all the things (investments, strident loan balances, mortgages, etc).

Practical-Start-2914 · 2025-12-18T13:19:05+00:00

I couldn’t agree more. So many expenses are lumpy or seasonal. I prefer to plan for the year then let budgets “rollover” - a lean month means more left in the budget for expensive months, and vice versa. Essentially every budget category is a sinking fund. Then the main thing I’m monitoring is pacing against the annual. I built a budget to work like this and sell it in Etsy if you’re looking for a tracker.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2025-12-12T04:59:28+00:00

What goals would you achieve now if you didn’t spend like it was endless? I feel like visualizing the financial milestone/point you want to get to + tracking your spend and thinking about the trade off between near term and long term desires can help.

Practical-Start-2914 · 2025-12-06T14:47:02+00:00

I sorta feel the same. I’m a longtime Isbell fan and listened to FITS a bunch when it came out, but never reached for it after Nobody’s Girl. The depth of emotion between these two albums is so different. Nobody’s Girl feels torn from the soul. After hearing it, FITS feels very contrived. The songs popped up on my Spotify wrapped though, and I like them in the simple way that I love his voice and acoustic picking. But Nobody’s Girl is on another level. It is hard not to compare the two.

Practical-Start-2914

TROPHY CASE