Household book (Excel 2007)

• Are you using Excel 2016? Then read the article ‘Household Booklet (Excel 2016)’.
• Are you using Excel 2013? Then read the article ‘Household Booklet (Excel 2013)’.
• Are you using Excel 2010? Then read the article ‘Household Booklet (Excel 2010)’.

• Open Excel.
• Click the Office button at the top left.
• Then click New.
• In the search box at the top, type ‘Personal budget’ and press the Enter key.
• There are two templates named ‘Personal Budget’. We discuss ‘Personal monthly budget’. You can recognize these by the blue and pink cells.
• Double click on Personal budget to open the housekeeping book template.

The template opens. At the top you will see your income and below it a list of items you can fill in.

Of course you want to save the template with a clear name. The default name is ‘PersonalMonthlyBudget1’. That’s not saying much. Better is something like ‘Personal monthly budget 2013’.

• Click the Office button in the top left > Save as.
• Browse to the folder where you want to save the file.
• Type the name in the field behind ‘file name’.
• click on Save.
• Your monthly budget has been saved. It is now easier to find, because it has been given a clear name.

Next time you can find the document in the folder where you saved it.

The housekeeping book is very clear. Cost items and sources of income are listed. You enter this for the month for which you opened the tab.

The template assumes estimated income and expenses, and actual income and expenses. Did you spend more on a particular post than you thought? In that case, a red triangle will be placed in front of the amount under the heading ‘Difference’. Is there any money left in that post? Then there is a green circle next to it. A yellow triangle is used for small losses. This way you can quickly see which items cost too much for you after filling in.

Not every post applies to every user. For example, under the heading ‘Entertainment’ there is the item ‘Sports competitions’. If you never go there, this post will not apply. You do not have to fill in anything.

For other items, an amount has already been entered on the template, for example under ‘Video/DVD’. If this does not apply (because you never buy or watch DVDs), you must empty the cells (boxes) with amounts in that item.

This is how you do it:

• Click in the cell you want to empty.
• Press the Delete key on your keyboard.
• The default amount disappears.

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. But if you change the name. We are changing the cost item ‘Cable’ to ‘Internet and TV’.

• Click in the cell labeled “Cable.”
• The same text appears in the formula bar at the top of the screen. There you can edit the text.
• Click with the mouse exactly behind the text and press the Backspace key on your keyboard until the text is gone.
• Then type the correct name of the post, in our case ‘Internet and TV’ and press the Enter key.
• The formula bar now suddenly shows the name of another item, namely ‘Garbage’. That means that the text of your own cell has been changed, and the cell below is now selected.

In this way you can, for example, change amounts of money and names of items as often as you want.

Video

The video below shows you exactly how to do this in Excel 2010. The steps may differ slightly in Excel 2007.

You start by filling in your estimated earnings. You do this at the top left of the file.

• Under ‘Estimated Monthly Income’, click on the cell behind ‘Income 1’.
• Now type your estimated income. We enter 1500 here.
• Click with the mouse on the cell behind ‘Extra income’. This could be, for example, surcharges from the Tax Authorities. We enter 100 here.
• 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.’

Now we are going to enter our expenses. We first fill in the estimate. That’s what we want to spend, within our budget. This is done in the same way as described above.

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

Items that have already been filled in by Excel, but that are not applicable, can be changed to 0 in the above-mentioned way. You do this in both sections, both for the estimated expenditure and the actual expenditure.

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

• Right click on the tab Personal monthly budget at the bottom of Excel.
• click on Move or copy.
• Check the box in the new window Make a copy.
• click on OK.
• You will notice that a new tab has appeared, called ‘Personal Monthly Budget (2)’, to the left of the original tab.
• Repeat the above until you have twelve tabs.

Now we’re going to name each tab 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.

Do not forget to save the Excel file regularly while filling in your budgets. You do this via the Office button at the top left > Save . You open the file after use via the Explorer, or by starting Excel and then via the Office button > To open .