The Best Templates to Track Personal Expenses in Excel

Staying on top of your spending is crucial for achieving financial security and finding ways to save money. Among its many amazing functions, Excel can also serve as an excellent tool for monitoring your expenses. To help you make the first step toward taking control of your spending habits, we’ve compiled a list of the best templates for tracking personal expenses in Excel.

The Best Microsoft Templates to Track Personal Expenses in Excel

Apart from providing Excel software, Microsoft offers several great templates for tracking personal expenses. All of these templates are free and easy to use and customize.

Basic Personal Budget

If you want to keep track of the entire year’s spending and saving with a simple template, this Basic Personal Budget might be your go-to choice.

The template consists of two Excel worksheets titled “Summary” and “Expense.” After entering your income information and all expenses, the Summary worksheet will show your cash status and total monthly expenditure. The Expense worksheet includes standard categories and subcategories needed for budgeting. What’s great about this template is that it offers easy filtering and sorting.

Besides helping you understand your personal spending, this invaluable template can also help manage the budget for a smaller project.

Simple Personal Budget

If you prefer a one-page view of all of your expenses, this Simple Personal Budget can get the job done.

The template is easy to navigate and neatly organized, making it extremely user-friendly. After inputting your income and expenses, dedicated cells use embedded formulas to calculate your monthly and yearly totals. To help you visualize the data, there are sparklines next to each header.

The sparklines highlight patterns and trends in your spending, helping you gain an in-depth insight into your financial habits.

You can use this handy template to gain better control of your finances or save money for a specific project or goal.

Personal Monthly Budget Spreadsheet

The Personal Monthly Budget Spreadsheet is an excellent choice for people who’d like a more elaborate template for budgeting.

The template contains multiple expense headers focused on the most common spending habits, such as:

• Housing
• Food
• Transportation
• Personal care
• Pets

If the template doesn’t include a specific category that’s important for your personal budget, don’t worry. This template offers editable subcategories, allowing personalization according to your needs.

The income section is divided into two separate fields – primary and secondary sources. This feature allows you to streamline the budgeting of each income source every month.

Easy Monthly Budget

Visual learners might benefit the most by downloading this Easy Monthly Budget.

The template is pretty straightforward. It allows you to see how much money you earn and spend as well as what you spend it on. Apart from the Income and Expenses worksheets, you’ll also see a Summary worksheet that will give you a great overview of your overall finances.

To help you visualize the nature of your spending habits, the template uses eye-catching charts to indicate the items on which you spend the most. This nifty feature can help you cut unnecessary expenses and work toward your long-term goals.

Budget Calculator

If you don’t need any of the bells and whistles, just a tool to do the math for you, consider using this simple Budget Calculator.

You can set up the expense categories according to your needs and use the calculator to see where all your money is going. The calculator will generate a bar chart that will quickly indicate if you’re under or over your budget.

The template is intended for a monthly budget and will help you stay on the right track with your finances.

The Best Third-Party Templates to Track Personal Expenses in Excel

Good financial health is seemingly all the rage, leading many third-party websites to create various lively and intricate Excel templates. They work in much the same way as their Microsoft counterparts, and they’re all free to use.

Personal Monthly Budget

This Personal Monthly Budget is perfect for getting your finances under control.

The template allows you to compare your set budget against your actual spending every month. The difference is calculated and formatted in an easy-to-understand manner, allowing you to quickly realize where you might be overspending.

This extremely helpful template is broken down into main headings and subheadings, allowing you to track every expense. The main headings include:

• Home expenses
• Transportation
• Health
• Daily living
• Entertainment

Some numbers are already included to help you get the hang of the template, so make sure to replace them with your own.

Simple Budget Spreadsheet

If you’d like a stylish and colorful template without too many overwhelming details, this Simple Budget Spreadsheet will probably pique your interest.

This template is well-organized and straightforward. While simple, it contains everything you’ll need to monitor your spending habits efficiently.

There’s a sample spreadsheet to give you an idea of how you could organize and track your finances. This spreadsheet also contains a brief guide on the budget’s three sections:

• What’s Coming In
• What’s Going Out (Fixed expenses)
• What’s Going Out (Variable expenses)

The second spreadsheet is blank and waiting for you to fill it in and start your budgeting journey.

Personal Expense Tracker

The Personal Expense Tracker is a fantastic all-in-one template, perfect for advanced users who want to take every little detail into account.

This colorful template has everything you might need for thoroughly tracking your personal expenses. It’s laid out across multiple spreadsheets and includes tons of different options. The template also features multiple charts that can help you visualize your spending.

In a rare feat, this template allows you to track various payment forms, such as cash, credit or debit card, and check.

Thanks to how extensive this template is, it will undoubtedly help you take expense tracking to the next level.

Personal Budget Spreadsheet

The Personal Budget Spreadsheet is another extensive template that will allow you to maintain a dynamic insight into your financial habits.

This template enables you to track and manage your income, expenses and savings. Regarding the last category, there’s a unique field titled “Potential to Save.” Any increase in your income or decrease in your expenses will automatically be allocated toward savings. If you manage to keep it that way, you’ll achieve the ideal field value of “0.”

Other than that, there’s a plethora of headings, subheadings, and visually striking graphs to help you keep track of your monthly and yearly budget at a glance.

College Budget Template

Going off to college and becoming independent can be stressful for many reasons, with budgeting probably taking one of the top places. This College Budget Template can help smooth that transition and instill confidence in your financial planning.

The template is easy to understand and use and contains everything you need to track your expenses while in college. The Income section includes different funding sources, including:

• Employment
• Parents
• Student Loans
• Scholarships
• Savings

Thanks to this well-thought-out template, you’ll stay on top of your budget for the month, semester, and the entire school year. Hopefully, this will lead to maintaining a positive balance in your bank account throughout college.

Have More Sense Than Money

Using one of the Excel templates described in this article can go a long way toward improving your overall financial situation. Choose one that best suits your needs and matches your priorities, and start working on your short-term and long-term financial goals immediately.

Which of these templates calls your name? What is a section that you can’t go without? Let us know in the comments section below.