As a couple who want to manage their finances effectively, you must budget together. This is because it gives you a true picture of how much you are jointly spending and saving and helps you cultivate healthy financial habits.
Therefore, a budget is the first step in identifying financial habits and values before you can formulate a solid plan to make sure your couple’s financial obligations are fulfilled in a timely manner and goals are carefully planned. Some of the items you need to consider in a couple’s budget include living expenses like utilities, rent, and food, as well as insurance, investment, saving, debt repayment, and emergency funds.
The budgeting process can be tedious and repetitive as you do so every month. This is why we have a ready-to-use spreadsheet budget template to simplify this process. It contains elements such as monthly income, expenses, and shared savings to help you and your partner create an in-sync money management approach that makes sure your monthly financial obligations are met. This template is suitable for all couples, whether you are unmarried yet or newlyweds who want to save for their first home or a senior couple managing their pension income.
How to Use this Spreadsheet Effectively
This template enables you to implement the fundamentals of budgeting by allowing you to track your income and expenses to determine how much you can save. It, therefore, has all the elements you need to create a realistic monthly budget as a couple.
Here is a discussion of how you can leverage this free budget spreadsheet to make sure you have a reliable combined financial plan:
Financial summary
At the top, the spreadsheet indicates the savings in your account at the start of the month. This acts as a reference for how much you have saved so far. Next, you have entries for the month and year of the budgeting period. This helps you track your finances with time. Just beneath, the spreadsheet indicates a summary of this month’s income, expenses, and savings. These figures are filled in automatically based on the calculations in the other sections of the template.
Separate income and expenses
Before accounting for the shared finances, you first need to report the income and expense details for each partner/spouse. This is because everyone will have different income sources and financial needs despite being in a relationship. You will find each spouse has their section; Spouse A’s details are on the left side, and Spouse B’s on the right side.
Examples of income sources include salary, rent income, wages, and freelance projects, but you can add other unique sources. Each spouse’s income and expenses are automatically calculated and the total is given under the ‘Net Income’ and automatically summed and recorded in the budget summary section.
Examples of separate expenses include accommodation, utilities, transportation, insurance, taxes, childcare, etc. In addition, shared expenses and shared savings are calculated as they make up the total monthly expenses.
- Shared expenses: Shared expenses are the financial obligations that both of you as a couple have to fulfill. Examples of such expenses include mortgage/rent, internet, electricity, cable/Netflix, and other costs like gas. This section is set to automatically sum the shared expenses and divide the figure such as Spouse A pays for 60% of the total and Spouse B pays 40%. The formulas are in Cell F26 and Cell F28, respectively. Remember, you can modify this contribution formula in these cells as long as both percentages amount to 100%.
- Shared Savings: Shared savings indicate how much you and your partner have decided to set aside monthly to fulfill various short-term or long-term financial goals. You can enter each spouse’s monthly savings under ‘Shared Savings’ section.
Each spouse’s contribution to the shared expenses and shared savings is then added to their expenses. The total is automatically recorded under the ‘Net Expenses’ sections and updated in the budget overview at the top. The net expenses are then subtracted from the net income for each spouse to determine their separate disposable incomes.
Pie chart
This spreadsheet is equipped with two pie charts to provide a visual representation of what percentage of each spouse’s earnings is added to the total of the combined income. These visual tools help you quickly view your financial health as a couple and make sure every income earned is budgeted for.
A Quick Word
You will find this template for making a couple’s budget in Excel spreadsheet and Google Sheets formats. This is to give you the option to leverage the capabilities of these two file formats. For instance, with the Google Sheets version, you can use the ‘share’ feature to enable you and your partner to gain real-time remote access to the budget and instantly view any updates made by the other.
