This {free} beginner printable budget worksheet is a simple and functional way to set up your finances and get a look at the month ahead whether you are a beginner, newlyweds joining checkbooks or seasoned savers.
Let’s face it: budgeting is important! It’s no surprise that money tracking printables have become super popular. That’s why we’re happy to bring you this fantastic & FREE monthly worksheets. You can easily set up your budget, track everything and know where your money goes.
Budget: A snapshot of your income and expenses. Having an income keeps you on track for your day to day spending. 54% of people live paycheck to paycheck in the US, including 60% of millennials making over $100,000.
💵 Why This Works
Easy to Fill In | Filling it out is pretty simple – add your expected income, jot down your expenses, date due, whether it’s been paid yet (you can fill this in throughout the month) and any helpful notes you may need.
Beginner Friendly | It is beginner friendly which means super simple to follow when you are starting a new habit. You’ll find it easy to add in your income, expenses and a date for everything that you’ve paid. Best of all, there is also a helpful section where you can include notes for every transaction.
Reminders | If you’re like me, you look at what you paid last month to remind yourself what you need to pay this month. I can’t tell you how many times I forgot about a bill until the prior month’s expenses log reminded me. I would have hated to have paid those late fees!
Introduce the budgeting worksheets for teens as they take on their first jobs to learn to pay bills and save their money.
💸 Setting up Budget Binder Ideas
So, let’s get started! I recommend you print at least six of these FREE Printable Budget Worksheet and place them in a binder. It will help you prepare for the next six months.
If they are there, printed and ready to use, you will be more apt to use them.
It will take a little bit to get used to writing down all of your expenses. That’s ok. It won’t take long before it gets to be a habit. It is funny, but after a few months, I noticed that I stressed a lot less about money. I knew exactly how much income I had and knew where all of my expenses were going. (Did you hear my sigh of relief?)
This free monthly budget printable is a simple tool that you don’t need anything extra. You don’t need anything complicated – print this one page to help you get started.
Be sure to take a look at our other free budgeting printables, so you can find others that work for every personal finance project. We know that once you start to use these, you won’t be able to resist staying organized and on track!
Ready to dig deeper and tackle your budget for this year? Snag the
31 Day Savvy Budget Planner.
📒 How to Use
When you create a monthly budget, include all of the regular, recurring expenses. These may include rent or mortgage, utilities and estimated amounts for groceries or eating out.
Create a Miscellaneous category (similar to what you do with the money envelope system) and include incidentals such as birthday or holiday gifts, or a car repair or anything else that you will pay for that doesn’t happen all the time. It is those sneaky, unplanned expenses that can really derail your budgeting plans.
Make sure to use the notes to explain specifically the expense. I am surprised how quickly I forget what I spent money on, so using the notes helps to refresh my memory and makes it easy to reference later.
📅 Review Monthly
This is so important. Using a tool like this gives you the opportunity to review your monthly budgets. Are you seeing different categories of spending change significantly over time? It helps to pinpoint changes in expenses early and helps you to quickly adjust. Set up a time using the 2024 Yearly Calendar. Our family does Admin Monday so we know that is our time to routinely look at our bills so nothing sneaky can happen in 7 days.
I realized that I was spending more and more money each month to go to the movies. Oops! I love the movie theater popcorn, but I didn’t like seeing how much I spent or how often I went. I decided to subscribe to a streaming service instead which dramatically reduced this entertainment cost. Of course, I don’t get the movie theater popcorn ! Sigh…
The other sneaky expense I discovered was the total cost of fancy coffee drinks. I am too embarrassed to tell you how much I spent. While I miss my daily Starbucks runs, my wallet thanked me immediately!
Sometimes, just writing down the expenses on a tracker and reviewing them will help to figure out where all the money goes. The free worksheet will help you make decisions to spend money wisely.
Nugget of Knowledge: Take a look at the Totals section. It shows you exactly how much money you have left over after you’ve paid for your expenses. You can add that money to an emergency fund, or invest in a retirement account.
Note: I like to play games to motivate me and my family to save money. Seriously! It can be a lot of fun, and we all like to cross off our goals as we achieve them. Check out the Penny Challenge and the 52 Week Money Saving Challenge. These are fun, fast and effective ways to save money!
We use a lot of our monthly calendars to keep track of when we check our charges and expenses.
March Calendar
💰 Expert Tips
If you’ve never budgeted before, this is a great time to start. With this freebie, you can take control of your finances.
1. Fully document your monthly expenses. The most common mistake is to quickly jot down your monthly expenses and realize later that you forgot about a few. Remember that by tracking everything, you have the opportunity to make changes. Your goal when you start budgeting is to track it all. Don’t leave out anything! You might not like the result, but it is so important to write it down.
2. Review the Prior Month’s Expenses. Don’t just input the numbers and leave them to move on to the next month. Carve out 20 to 30 minutes during the 1st week of the month to look at the previous month’s expenses. What expenses were higher than expected? Which ones were lower? Where did you not spend any money? Are there any surprises? Did you forget to track anything? These are some of the questions that you should answer before filling out the printable expenses tracker.
3. Adjust Your Budget. Your budget is not carved in stone. You’ll need to keep adjusting it. I start by thinking about my goals and then think about how I can adjust the planned monthly expenses to reach my goal. As I noted above, I made coffee from home and watched Netflix instead of going out to the movies, and saved a lot of money each month.
This isn’t a one-and-done step. I look at my budget every single month to keep myself on track.
4. Use Envelopes to Help. Take a simple printable envelope and add cash to cover the planned expenses for that category. It is silly, but extremely effective. I had a budget of $85 per week for groceries and could have easily charged it, but I find that I make better choices if I pay for cash out of my grocery envelope. Bye bye $20 bottle of wine.
Note: If I have any money left over from the envelopes, I add it to my savings accounts or include it to the two savings games I listed above.
5. Be Proud of Progress. If you’ve never kept a budget before and you track for a month – that’s BIG progress! Don’t compare yourself to other people. The goal is continual improvement, so take pride each time you record your expenses and review the budget. Too many people would never even think about doing that!
More Free Budget Printables
❓ Printable FAQ
The best place to start is your bank statement if they are pulled directly from your checking account or the credit card statement if they are charged each month.
Most likely, you are not accounting for ALL of the expenses or all of the places that you outlay money.
You can’t say I take in $1000 per month but not account for the CASH you take out of the ATM. Every single penny has to be accounted for or this will not work.
Places for hidden fees/money: ATM, grocery stores, dry cleaners, coffee shops, donations at work for baby showers, purchases of Boy Scout popcorn, the forgotten subscriptions that are on auto pay that you never think about like Smugmug or the $4.00 newspaper fee. Don’t forget the gifts you give and all donations and checking account fees. These seems a big strict but for it all to match, everything needs to be added.
Start by looking at your income first, that is your NET TAKE HOME PAY of what you see that comes into the checking account. Second, track all the expenses that flow through.
That is where you start to document on your worksheet. It might be ugly and scary but do it anyways.
Then you start figuring out where to trim expenses and live within those means.
Staying consistent and documenting what is really happening. Once you skip a week or month, it is so hard to circle back. Set aside a designated time to focus on your finances each week.
🖨️ How to Print
Note: This free blank budget printable is non-editable, so you need to fill your budget information in manually.
Enter your email address and we’ll deliver direct you to it right away.
We recommend you print it on 8½” x 11″ paper at 100% size, so you will easily be able to see your budgeting information.
Please note: this budgeting printable has been created for personal use only. Do not upload the printable files to your own site.
If you would like to share this printable, please do so by linking then crediting this post and our website. Thanks!
Happy Budgeting!
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I would like the monthly budget worksheet.
Carolyn, did you put your name in the email form to receive it? Just let me know if you have issues so I can help. Cheers! Ginny
Thank you!
Enjoy!!
Thank you!
Dawn, so happy this is going to work for you! Enjoy! Ginny
Please send home budget printable file.
Hi Clyde, did you sign up for the email and did it not arrive? Did you happen look at your spam or promotions folders? That is the sneaky place they tend to hide which I don’t have control over and wish I did! I can email you the file but want to make sure you are getting all the freebies we send every week too! Let me know what I can do to help! Ginny 🙂
I need this worksheet please send me this sheet VIA Email_
Jack, can you not download it? Email me at info@savorandsavvy.com if you need help downloading. I’m more than happy to help! Ginny
Thanks, I’m trying to set my wife up with an easy to use budget.
James, so glad! Make sure you check out all the budgeting printables. We have dozens!!! Let me know if you need help locating them. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
Great templates! thanks for sharing – it would help many of our accounting and tax clients. We will pass this along.
Awww, thanks! We are prepping for others as well as we are like you, the more tools to help, the better!