How to Make a Monthly Budget in Google Sheets (Step by Step)
In this guide
A monthly budget answers one question before the month starts: after the bills are paid, how much is left, and where should it go? This guide shows you how to create a monthly budget in Google Sheets from a blank file. You'll write down your take-home pay, list your fixed bills by due date, estimate the spending that changes from month to month, and pick a method for whatever remains. The last step is a short weekly check, so the plan still matches your bank account at the end of the month.
If you'd rather start from a finished file, there's a monthly budget template at the end. The steps are the same either way, and doing them once by hand makes any template easier to read.
What you need before you start
Gather three things before you open a spreadsheet:
- Your most recent pay stub, or the last deposit in your bank account if you're paid without one. You want the amount that actually lands, after taxes and deductions.
- Two months of bank and credit card statements. One month can mislead you. A birthday, a car repair or a trip makes it look bigger than usual, and a quiet month makes it look smaller. Two give you a fairer picture.
- A free Google account, so you can create a sheet in Google Drive. Excel works too. The formulas in this guide are written the same way in both.
Most of the first pass is sorting statements into bills and everyday spending. The spreadsheet part goes quickly once that list exists.
To keep things concrete, this guide follows one made-up person through every step. Call her Maya. Her numbers are an example, not a target.
Step 1: Write down your take-home pay
Start with the money that reaches your account, not your salary. Taxes, health insurance and retirement contributions come out before you see a cent, so budgeting from the gross number plans money you never get.
Look at your pay stub for the line called net pay. If you're paid every two weeks, you get 26 checks a year, so most months have two and two months have three. Budget each month on two checks and treat the third as a bonus month.
Maya is paid twice a month. Each check is $1,700 after deductions, so her monthly take-home pay is $3,400. That's the only income line in her budget.
If you have a side job, add it as its own line. Keep each source separate so you can see which one changed when a month comes in short.
If your pay changes every month
Freelancers, servers and anyone on commission can't use last month's number as a promise. Look at the last six months and pick the lowest month you'd call normal. Build the budget on that number. When a bigger month lands, the extra goes to savings or to next month's gap, never to spending you already planned.
If that's you, an irregular income budget app does this math for you: you add each income at the lowest amount it usually brings, type what really landed, and it works out a daily spending number from the money you actually have.
Step 2: List fixed bills by due date
Fixed bills are the ones that cost about the same every month and come whether you think about them or not. Rent or mortgage, insurance, phone, internet, car payment, loan payments and subscriptions all belong here.
Write each one with its amount and the day of the month it's due. The due date matters more than people expect. If your rent leaves on the 1st and your paycheck lands on the 15th, the money has to be sitting there before the check arrives.
Here's Maya's list:
| Bill | Due | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Rent | 1st | $1,250 |
| Car insurance | 5th | $110 |
| Phone | 12th | $65 |
| Internet | 15th | $60 |
| Car payment | 20th | $285 |
| Streaming | 22nd | $23 |
| Student loan | 28th | $180 |
| Total | $1,973 |
Sorting by date shows something a plain total hides. Maya is paid on the 1st and the 15th. Her first check has to cover $1,425 of bills due before the 15th (rent, insurance and phone), and her second check covers the other $548. The month balances, but the first half is much tighter.
Bills that come once or twice a year, like a car registration or an annual subscription, go here too. Divide the yearly cost by 12 and set that amount aside every month, so the bill doesn't land on a month that can't absorb it.
Step 3: Estimate variable spending
Variable spending is everything that changes: groceries, gas, eating out, household supplies, haircuts, gifts. This is where your two months of statements earn their keep.
Go through each statement and tag every purchase with a category. Keep the list short. Five to eight categories is enough to start, and you can split one later if it hides too much. Add up each category for both months and take the average.
Maya's averages from her last two months of statements:
- Groceries: $450
- Gas: $140
- Eating out: $160
- Household and pharmacy: $60
- Personal (haircuts, clothes, small stuff): $70
That's $880 a month. Add the $1,973 in fixed bills and she spends $2,853, which leaves $547 from her $3,400. If your total comes out higher than your pay, that's useful to know now. It tells you which categories need a lower number before the month starts.
Step 4: Pick a method
You now know what comes in, what's fixed and what usually goes out. A method decides what happens to the rest. Three are worth knowing, and any of them works if you stick with it.
50/30/20
This one splits take-home pay into three buckets: needs, wants and savings. It's quick to set up because you only track three numbers. It also tells you fast when your needs are too big a share of your pay. The 50/30/20 rule explained with a real paycheck walks through the split, the gray areas and where it stops fitting.
Zero-based
Every dollar of income gets a job until the left column reads zero. Zero doesn't mean an empty account. It means savings, extra debt payments and next month's buffer are written in as lines, the same way rent is. For Maya, that means assigning the $547: say $250 to an emergency fund, $150 extra to the student loan, $100 to a car repair fund and $47 to a small buffer for the month.
Zero-based takes more effort than 50/30/20, but nothing is left unplanned. If you have debt, the extra payment line pairs well with the order you pick in debt snowball vs avalanche.
By paycheck
Instead of one monthly plan, you make one plan per paycheck: which bills that check covers, and what's left until the next one. It fits people who live close to payday, and it matches the due-date list from Step 2. The ADHD budgeting guide uses this approach, and it works for anyone who finds a whole month too long to keep in view.
Step 5: Build it in Google Sheets
Open Google Drive, choose New, then Google Sheets, and name the file with the month and year. Then set up four columns in row 1:
- A: Category. Every income source, bill and spending category, one per row.
- B: Planned. The number from Steps 1 to 4.
- C: Actual. What really happened. You fill this in during the month.
- D: Left. Planned minus actual.
Put income at the top, then fixed bills, then variable spending, then savings and debt lines. Leave an empty row between groups so the sheet is easy to scan.
In D2, type =B2-C2 and press Enter. Click D2, then drag the small square in the corner down the column. Every row now shows what's left in that category. A negative number means you spent more than planned.
Under each group, add a total. If Maya's bills are in rows 4 to 10, the total in B11 is =SUM(B4:B10). Copy it across to C11 and D11. Do the same under variable spending and savings.
Finally, add one line at the bottom called Left to assign. It's your income minus every planned line. If income sits in B2 and your group totals are in B11, B18 and B23, the formula is =B2-B11-B18-B23. With zero-based, that cell should read 0. With 50/30/20, it shows what's left after the three buckets.
Two small things make the sheet easier to live with. Select columns B to D and format them as currency, so every amount shows a dollar sign. Then freeze row 1 (View, then Freeze, then 1 row), so the column names stay visible when you scroll.
Step 6: Check it once a week
A budget that only gets opened on the 30th is a report of what went wrong. Pick one day a week, the same day every week, and give it ten minutes.
- Open your bank and card apps and type each purchase since the last check into the Actual column.
- Read the Left column top to bottom. Anything negative, or close to zero with weeks to go?
- Move money from a category with room to the one that's short. Change both Planned numbers so the totals stay honest.
- Look at the bills due before your next check and make sure the money is there.
At the end of the month, copy the tab, rename it for the next month and clear the Actual column. Your planned numbers carry over, and each month takes less setup than the one before.
Expect the first two months to be off. Maya's eating out came in $40 over in her first month and her gas came in $25 under. That's normal. The plan gets more accurate each time you compare it to what really happened.
Skip the setup: a ready monthly budget template
If you'd rather not build the columns and formulas yourself, the monthly budget template has this structure ready for Google Sheets and Excel. You set the month, year and starting balance in Setup, rename every income, bill and expense line to match your life, and type your numbers. The Dashboard tab shows income, spent, saved, left to spend and your savings rate, with charts that update from your entries.
It comes as two files: a filled example workbook, so you can see what a finished month looks like, and a clean blank one for your own numbers.
If you want the whole year in one file instead of one month at a time, the Ultimate Budget Planner is a budget spreadsheet with a tab for every month, recurring bills, sinking jars, a debt payoff tab and net worth. You can compare both, and every other option, on the budget templates page.
Frequently asked questions
How much of my income should go to bills?
There is no single right share. Add up your fixed bills and divide by your take-home pay to see where you stand today. A common starting guide is the 50/30/20 split, which puts about half of take-home pay toward needs. If your bills already take more than that, the budget shows you where the pressure is, and you adjust wants and savings around it.
Is Google Sheets or Excel better for a budget?
Both work. The SUM formula and the planned, actual and left columns in this guide are written the same way in each. Google Sheets is free, saves automatically and is easy to share with a partner. Excel works offline and suits people who already use it. Pick the one you will actually open every week.
How often should I update my budget?
Plan once a month, before the month starts, and check it once a week. The weekly check takes about ten minutes: type in what you spent, look at the left column, and move money between categories if one is running low. Waiting until the end of the month makes overspending hard to fix.
What if I overspend in one category?
Move money from a category that still has some left, and write the change down so the totals stay right. Overspending once is normal. If the same category runs over three months in a row, the planned number is too low, so raise it and lower something else.