As the cost of living continues to rise in South Africa, it is important for us to know where our hard-earned money goes and what our major monthly expenses are.
You can start the year off the right way with our monthly budget template, which is designed to help you manage all aspects of your daily budget in an easy-to-understand Excel budget spreadsheet. You can download the Excel budgeting template for free here:
A monthly planner to create your personalised budget is a great way to manage your finances to ensure that you are not living above your means, that you know how much you can spend on certain items, and that you are not caught short of money at the end of the month.
How to use the excel monthly budget template
This simple budget planner opens as a spreadsheet that requires access to Microsoft Excel to work. The budget sections are split into the following 12 categories:
- Your monthly housing budget
- Your monthly food budget
- Your monthly transportation budget
- Your monthly personal care budget
- Your monthly pet-care budget
- Your monthly insurance budget
- Your monthly budget for taxes
- Your monthly for existing loan payments
- Your monthly legal payments
- Your monthly budget for gifts and donations
- Your monthly budget for savings and investments
- Your monthly entertainment budget
Each of these categories is broken down into individual rows in the budget planner with their ‘projected cost’ which allows you to forecast your monthly expenses. You can then update the ‘actual cost’ to calculate the ‘difference’.
If used accurately, the Excel budget template will show you where you are overspending in your budget each month as the ‘difference’ column will update with a red icon. This is how much you’ve overspent on your monthly budget allowance for that section.
This is designed as a personal monthly budget template, so you have complete control over the amounts you add.
It’s also possible to edit sections, add new rows, or remove sections that are not relevant to your own personal budget planner.
Do you want a printable monthly budget template instead?
Some of us may find a monthly budget plan easier to follow if it’s something physical that we can stick to our fridge rather than something we can hide away in a laptop.
That’s why we’ve also provided a simplified printer-friendly version of the personal monthly budget plan - you can download it here for free:
Good luck with your budget!
We hope you find our free budget template simple and effective in your monthly budgeting. Remember to be thorough and honest with your record-keeping to get the accurate insights from your budget planner.
