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Budget Planner Printable Template {Free}

Published: Nov 23, 2021 · Modified: Feb 9, 2022 by Ginny · This post may contain affiliate links.

Snag our 72 Page Printable Home Binder Today →

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This {free} printable monthly budget template 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.

free monthly budget worksheet with text overlay
Contents hide
1 💵 Why This Works
2 💸 Setting up your Planner in a Binder
3 📒 How to Use
4 📅 Review Monthly
5 💰 Expert Tips
6 Printable FAQ
7 🖨️ How to Print

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!

💸 Setting up your Planner in a Binder 

So, let’s get started! I recommend you print at least six of these printables 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.

writing down all of your expenses in a printable budget and expense tracker will help your frugality goals.  This is a binder with the printable worksheet filled out
Fill out the Monthly Budget Worksheet

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 budgeting tool is simple.  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 yo duo 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.  

monthly budget planner as a free printable to help track your budget each month

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.

Last 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!

💰 Expert Tips

Frugal Living Ideas | Monthly Budget Printable Free | Free Printable Monthly Budget Planner | Budget Worksheet | Budget Binder

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!

budget printables in a binder with columns filled in on a wooden table.
Three Hold Punch and Place in a Binder

Printable FAQ

How do I find out my recurring payments and where to document them?

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.
This is one of the biggest places to find hidden places to save money.

Why doesn’t everything match up correctly at the end of the 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.

What if I’m too overwhelmed and not sure where to start?

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.

What’s the biggest key to budgeting?

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 it your inbox right away.
  • We recommend you print it on 8 1/5 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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About Ginny

Hi! My name is Ginny and I know how busy life can be! I am a mom working hard to prepare healthy meals for my family that is always on the go!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dawn Kelley says

    January 11, 2022 at 11:37 am

    Thank you!

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      January 12, 2022 at 7:07 am

      Dawn, so happy this is going to work for you! Enjoy! Ginny

      Reply
  2. Clyde Hale says

    November 30, 2021 at 8:58 pm

    Please send home budget printable file.

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      December 01, 2021 at 11:15 am

      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 🙂

      Reply
  3. Jack says

    July 18, 2020 at 7:33 am

    I need this worksheet please send me this sheet VIA Email_

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      July 19, 2020 at 5:59 pm

      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

      Reply
  4. James says

    April 03, 2020 at 3:45 pm

    Thanks, I’m trying to set my wife up with an easy to use budget.

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      April 12, 2020 at 1:25 pm

      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!

      Reply
  5. Alyokhin CPA says

    September 14, 2019 at 5:46 pm

    Great templates! thanks for sharing – it would help many of our accounting and tax clients. We will pass this along.

    Reply
    • Ginny says

      September 16, 2019 at 10:44 am

      Awww, thanks! We are prepping for others as well as we are like you, the more tools to help, the better!

      Reply

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Family Photo Hi! My name is Ginny and I know how busy life can be! I am a mom working hard to prepare healthy meals for families on the go! Read More...

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