Create a household book in Excel

Open a template suitable for a household book as follows:

• Open Excel.
• Click on ‘More templates’ at the top of the screen and type ‘Personal budget’ in the search field. Press the Enter key.
• Are you using Excel from 2013 or earlier? Then it works a little differently: Click at the top left on File > New. In the search field, type ‘Personal budget’.
• An overview with templates appears. click on Personal monthly budget (see picture) or Personal budget (the template with blue and pink cells).
• click on To make.

  

The template opens. At the bottom you will see several tabs. The first tab gives some extra explanation with information from the creator of the template. Click on the ‘Personal Monthly Budget’ tab to see the table.

The housekeeping book is very clear. Cost items and sources of income are listed. Enter them per month.

The template is based on estimated income and expenses as well as actual income and expenses. This way you can quickly see what costs too much for you after filling in.

The ready-made document may contain items that do not apply to you. Below you can read how different elements can be adjusted.

Not every post applies to every user. You can choose to leave these entries and enter €0. Or you can empty them. How to empty cells (boxes) with entries or amounts:

• Click in the cell you want to empty.
• Press the Delete key on the keyboard.

The filling disappears. You can enter something else in the empty cells.

It is also possible to change the names of cost items. That is nice if a certain post does not apply in its current form.

• Click in the cell you want to change.
• The same text appears in the formula bar at the top. There you can change the text. Click the mouse exactly behind the text and press the Backspace key on the keyboard until the text is gone.

  

• Type the correct post name and press the Enter key.
• In this way you can, for example, change amounts of money and names of items as often as you want.

The formula bar now suddenly shows the name of another post. This will happen automatically after you press the Enter key. Excel then automatically jumps down to the next entry. You can change this right away. If not, click on the next post you do want to change.

Do not forget to save the Excel file regularly while filling in your budgets. If the computer unexpectedly breaks down, you don’t have to do everything again.

Are you saving the file for the first time? Then you have to come up with a name. Use a clear name that you can easily find. Think of something like ‘Personal monthly budget 2019’.

• Click on the top left File > Save as.
• click on To leaf through and navigate to the folder where you want to save the file.
• Enter the name in the field behind ‘File name’.
• click on Save.

If you save the file in the meantime, all you have to do is click File > Save.

Start filling in your estimated earnings. Do that in the top left corner of the file.

• Under “Planned Monthly Earnings,” click the cell to the right of “Earnings.”
• Now type your estimated income, for example your wages.
• Click on the cell behind ‘Additional income’. This could be, for example, surcharges from the Tax Authorities.
• Press the Enter key.

Some amounts of your expenses are broadly fixed, such as the amount of the rent or mortgage. They usually don’t change that quickly. You can fill in these costs first in the relevant item under ‘Estimated costs’ and then under ‘Actual costs’.

A year has twelve months, so your personal household book should have that many as well. The template has only one. At the bottom of the screen you will see the ‘Personal monthly budget’ tab. We are going to make eleven copies of this and give each of them the name of a different month.

Tip: precisely because you are going to make copies, it is useful that fixed income and fixed expenses are already entered. That saves filling the same boxes eleven times!

• Right click on the tab Personal monthly budget at the bottom of Excel.
  
• click on Move or copy.
• In the new window, click on the tab you are about to copy and put a check in front of Make a copy.
• click on OK.
• A new tab called “Personal Monthly Budget (2)” will appear to the left of the original tab. Repeat the above until you have twelve tabs.

Now we give each tab the name of a month.

• Right click on the leftmost tab.
• click on Renaming.
• Type a name, for example “January” and press the Enter key.
• The name of the tab is now ‘January’. Repeat the above for all tabs and give each one its own name.

At the bottom of the screen you can see which tab is open: that tab is brighter white with green letters.

Now you can enter all expenses. Start with the estimate. That’s what you can spend, within your budget. This is done in the same way as described earlier.

• Click on a cell, type the amount and press the Enter key.

Change items that have already been filled in by Excel, but that are not applicable, to 0 in the aforementioned way. Do this in both sections, both for the estimated expenditure and the actual expenditure.