diy: budgeting the easy way pt. 2

This is part 2 of the DIY for budgeting the easy way. Click here for part 1. 

If you followed along yesterday, you now have the basic structure for your GoogleDoc budget spreadsheet, complete with personalized colors and fonts if that strikes your fancy. Today I'll take you through the simple codes I used to make my budget user-friendly. 

1. Codes under Income

• Planned Wage & Other Income: Estimate what you make in one month. No code needed.
• Planned Total Income: As shown below, type =C8+C9 (unless your cells don't line up exactly like mine). You can also type = and then click on cell C8, type +, and click on cell C9. Either way works. Now your total income box will add itself if you ever change Wage or Other Income.
• Repeat these steps for the cells under Actual. They will show up as zero until you put a number in either Wage or Other Income (go ahead and play around with it if you want).

2. Codes under Planned Expenses

I have Tithing in this first cell, a percentage of my income for church. The code for this cell works for any item you want to monitor by a set percentage, deduced straight from your total income. 

• In the cell for Planned Tithing, type =(.1)*C10, or essentially, the desired percentage x Total Income cell.

For all the other cells under Planned Expenses, estimate what you spend every month and simply type the amount in the cell, no code needed. As you can see, I estimated my groceries to cost $20 a month and rent to be $200 a month.

3. Codes under Actual Expenses

• The base code for these cells is the same: =SUM(0).

Every time you spend money, you'll click into one of these cells and add the amount. For example, you spend $15 on groceries. You'll click on the cell and add the amount, so the text in the box will look like this: =SUM(0)+15. When you click outside the box, it'll add up the amount for you.

4. Codes under What's Left

• This column is basically for convenience and will show how much money you have left to spend. The code you'll type in tells it to subtract what you have spent from your available funds. As you see below, you'll type =C17-D17 (or whatever your cell names are).

Almost done! Come back tomorrow for the final part of the DIY series, and I'll show you how to finish up your budget.