Back when we first started keeping track of finances we developed a spreadsheet in Google Docs titled Achieve Something that was designed to track income and expenses and encourage us to watch our spending. Over time the spreadsheet evolved into Achieve Something II, the spreadsheet we currently use each month and often link to when describing our net worth progress.
Achieve Something II is not really an “every dollar has a name” budget, its more of a tracking system that organizes our income and expenses and keeps us in check. Although pre-assigning income and developing a very tight budget is probably the best way to pinch every penny, we have found that if we relegate unnecessary spending to a “fun fund”and take a frugal approach to all other spending decisions, we achieve a similar result while maintaining flexibility.
Details:
Achieve Something II incorporates our idea of a Fun Tax, which automatically taxes 5% of all earned income and allocates this for miscellaneous entertainment, dining out, or other fun stuff (you know what is fun and what is not). We don’t allocate a fixed balance of fun money each month, rather we set aside this 5% of what we earn and constantly replenish the fund when new income comes in. Less income means less spending.
We update Achieve Something II about every two weeks when a paycheck comes in, and then again at the end of the month.
Recently, we received several emails from our readers [Thank you for the feedback, we love it!] asking for access to the GoogleDoc, and decided create a downloadable template of the spreadsheet for everyone to use. So here is an excel version* of Achieve Something II in template form – feel free to download and customize to your own lifestyle, upload to your own GoogleDocs, or basically do anything at all.
*If you don’t have excel please contact us and we can provide a Google Docs version directly.
Let us know if you have any questions, comments, or feedback.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I have a similar excel system that I use. Originally I had placed a certain amount in our "fun fund" budget per month but I like your percentage idea better. I am planning on adopting that for September.
This month is a little off as even though hubby get's paid three times (he get's paid every two weeks and I get paid monthly) we took a vacation and then don't have his kids for most of the month so our spending is not normal.
Interesting post. Would you be interested in syndicating your content on the home page of my site? It's an online community of finance professionals ( http://www.wallstreetoasis.com ). I could add an RSS feed that will allow me to promote your blog posts to my home page (when i think it will lead to a good discussion and/or is appropriate), but I wanted to make sure you were comfortable syndicating first. The syndicated post would have a link back to your original post. Thanks, Patrick (you can reach me at wallstreetoasis@wallstreetoasis.com if you have any questions).
Also, if you are willing to provide a link to wallstreetoasis.com that would be much appreciated.
Yea, I find a percentage that changes with each paycheck is easier to stick to than a fixed amount set at the beginning of the month.
Congrats for having a sound budget, many people know nothing about it, they just spend what they get and how they get. I will download this right away.
I love your spreadsheets..the detail is amazing