A few months ago I bought FB's Dynamic Budgeting Sheet and the good news is that I am still using it! I have tried three other budgeting tools since starting blogging and gave up on all of them.Maybe I'm more motivated now than I was then to stick with things but FB's charts just make more sense to me. I am a very visual person so the layout, and colour help. I also like to record a lot of detail and with these charts there is room to do that, or not, if you prefer to track the basics only.
The charts are done in excel and there is a word document explaining how to set them up with excel tutorials included . I am not at all technical and emailed FB with a few queries about setting it up which she explained to me. The first thing you notice is the gorgeous colours! It's a visual delight and if I have to look at budgeting sheets to get out of debt it helps that they are bright and cheerful instead of just rows of numbers.
Once you open it up the navigation tabs along the bottom include:
Help: info about support, backup etc
Example: This was really helpful. It's an example budget sheet that shows you where the different entries you make will show up and how they are all linked. Again it's visual, so I found it much easier to understand than having to read about it.
Template: Then there is a template to use if you want to try out things and make a copy of a sample budget without having to use your actual budget sheets. Useful if you want to run different budget scenarios.
Net Worth: Enter all the information about assets and liabilities. The graphs will calculate and update automatically. There are monthly charts and graphs for net worth that show the breakdown for each asset and liability.
Debt Tracker: The same as for for net worth only regarding your debts. I love the the debt repayment chart, it's really motivating to see the drops, much better than a progress bar. If I was clever I'd put a copy here to show, but I'm not so you'll have to have a look here instead (just scroll down).
Savings: set up like the previous two sections
Year: This page automatically tracks your yearly spending in all the different categories and creates graphs and charts. You can tell at a glance what you have spent in every category for the year to date. You can't avoid knowing your 'real' spending patterns v's what you think you spend by looking at this chart regularly.
Monthly tabs: There are 12 monthly tabs where you enter your spending. There is a little bit of manual setting up to tell the charts which cells in excel to get information from. This isn't very hard to do and instructions are included. I save all our receipts and I update this once a week.
Once you enter everything you spend it automatically calculates information. It tells you how much % of income you are spending in each category which I have found really helpful. It is divided into 'first cheque' and 'second cheque' which I guess is the same as paydays. You can create more categories here for you spending.
In this section you can also keep track of you emergency fund, debt history, an "X" fund if you are saving for something and keep some notes on that month, all viewable from the one page.
Summary: I obviously really like the budgeting sheets. I love knowing the detail and with these I can easily and quickly pull out all kinds of information about our finances. But I like the way that the information is presented in different format, you can see a graph, a chart, numbers, %'s and it's all colour coded so you can find it fast. I also like being able to see so much information on the one page.
There is a little bit of setting up to do which if you are familiar with excel would be simple. If not there are instructions and FB is helpful if you get stuck.
So if you are getting ready to set up your budget for next year I can happily recommend it.
