Monthly Budget Template

A budget on paper works for a reason a spreadsheet does not: it sits where you can see it, and writing a number by hand is a small act of noticing. Most printable budgets are a table with empty cells and a title, which means the arithmetic is on you, every month, with a calculator. This one does the arithmetic before it prints. Type your income and your planned expenses in the customizer and the totals, the share of income each line takes, and what is left over are worked out and set on the sheet, so the page you pin up already knows where the month stands.

The page reads top to bottom. The title and the month sit at the top, with the summary in the corner where the eye lands: income, expenses, and the savings goal if you set one. The last line is the number you came for, what is left over or how far over you are, in the accent color. Then income as a short table, up to six sources. Then expenses, up to sixteen lines, each with the planned figure, a blank box for what you actually spent, and its share of income. Rent at 31 percent is a fact you can act on; rent at 1,500 is just a number.

The one decision worth explaining is the blank actual column. The planned figures are typed and set; the actual ones are written in by hand at the end of the month, in the box beside each line, because the point of a budget sheet is the comparison, and a comparison you have to open a laptop to make does not get made. The totals row has a box too, for the real total, next to the planned one.

A savings goal is a line in the summary and a switch. Set it and the left-over figure is what remains after the goal, so saving comes first, on paper. Five currencies, with the symbol and the number format that go with each. The notes at the foot take whatever height the tables leave, for what you want to remember about the month, and they come off with a switch.

Print it at 100%, not fit to page, on plain copier paper; the light-ink theme is there for the one you print every month. The free version is this design with the sample figures, in the Ledger theme, on Letter, with a small credit line at the foot, so you can see the layout on paper before you decide. The paid version takes your income, your expenses and your goal, drops the credit line, and comes back in Letter and A4 from one purchase, with a link that works for a year.