Savings Pots & 'Frills' Spending Budget Spreadsheet

EagerLearner

Hi all - I hope this spreadsheet will help someone out there - designed to work in addition to Martin's excellent budget planner:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=238575

With this, money Pots will become easier for you, as will 'frills' spending - easier to keep track of when you have a spreadsheet to log everything in...

Feedback welcomed :T

EagerLearner

This spreadsheet has been approved by MSE Andrea and is also featured in the Debt Free Wanna Be, Budgeting & Current accounts and Freebies boards for easy access.

This works in Excel (PC) and also Macs - please leave any feedback/comments here and I'll be happy to help.

Prudent

Thank you for this. Are you able to post an idoits guide to changing the figures as I have never used a spreadsheet before and this looks ideal.

EagerLearner

Hi Prudent - simply select the figure/cell you want to delete and press the backspace arrow or the delete button. You can also select several cells at once and clear all the info at the same time. Just don't delete any of the total columns etc! Feel free to post questions as I'm sure it hill helop others out there that are not familiar with Excel.

EagerLearner

Hi all - please do adjust this to however helps you best - one user has renamed the 'saving section' to the 'debt section' and typed in all his outgoings and see them on the chart so he can keep track and I am sure many Debt Free Wannabees will follow his lead on that one.

For me, I have copied the My Spending and My Spending Chart and created 2 more tabs - Our Spending and Our Spending Chart. For this, right click the tab you want to copy and click 'move or copy', then select the one you want to copy and tick the copy box. When they are created, rename them.

You then clear all the figures and I am going over all the joint account statements and typing in costs like:

- Food shopping
- council tax
- Water
- Gas
- Electric
- TV Licence
- Gym
etc

For this to work, just right click the new 'our spending' chart, click on 'source data' and change the source of the data by just deleting 'My' and changing it to 'Our' so it fetches the data from the right place.

The entire thing has forced me to sit down each month and tick things off my statements - plus I can now see exactly what is in my ICICI savings and what share of it is allocated to what saving.

Keep at it everyone!

richgirl

Theres also a useful savings calculator here http://www.moneyforums.co.uk/savings_calculator.php

EagerLearner

Thanks Richgirl - that's really useful - the other saving calculators I have looked are not as good as that one by a mile.

EagerLearner

Wow - 837 downloads of this spreadsheet to date! That's pretty amazing and I hope you are all saving some money! :T

EagerLearner

In response to a query - this may help anyone who has downloaded this spreadsheet:

Savings Tower Format

You may prefer to view the savings 'tower' in normal format, rather than 3D - for this, simply right-click, select 'chart type' and select the top middle option, this will change the chart to a plain tower which may be easier for you to read. See what you think.

Hashes Appearing in Columns

This normally happens when the figure you have in the cell is quite high - simply widen the column to eliminate this problem. Click on the top of the column (grey area) and when the mouse changes to a widening symbol, drag the column until the hashes dissapear.

EagerLearner

MSE have now allowed me to include this spreadsheet link in my signature as over 1,150 downloads have taken place!

You can also use the spreadsheet savings tab as a 'debt pot' rather than a 'savings pot' - and see the 'tower' going down every month :T :T :T

EagerLearner

Please note that this spreadsheet has been amended further with formulas and includes even more detailed instructions - 1,778 MSER's have downloaded it as of today!