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One income, fully visible

Personal Budget Template

A budget for one: your take-home pay at the top, four groups of categories below, and \u2014 the column the family sheets don't have \u2014 each group's share of your pay, computed live. Housing creeping past a third of take-home, savings quietly shrinking toward zero: the % column surfaces both while the month is still fixable. Excel and Sheets do the math; the PDF does the fridge.

Your money, your sheet

One sheet, every format.

Excel — with the % of pay column

Enter take-home pay once; every group shows its share of your pay alongside planned, actual, and difference.
Printable PDF preview
PDF

Printable PDF

The single-income month printed blank — generous rows and a LEFT OVER box at the bottom.
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Word / Google Docs

An editable table version for people who keep their money notes in documents.
Worth knowing

The percentages are the early-warning system.

Dollar amounts drift quietly — a rent increase here, a subscription there — and each one passes the “it’s only...” test individually. Shares of income don’t pass so easily. Housing at 30% of pay is a common comfort line; watching it cross 35% after a lease renewal is the kind of fact that changes apartment-hunting timelines. The % column exists to make drift look like drift.

The benchmark worth keeping in view: the 50/30/20 shape — half of pay to needs, thirty to wants, twenty to savings and debt. Your groups won’t map onto it perfectly (that’s fine; this sheet is category-first, not rule-first), but if Savings & Debt reads 4% three months running, no amount of category shuffling is the real problem. For the rule-first version, the 50/30/20 sheet runs the buckets natively.

Rule over categories
50/30/20 Budget
Three buckets sized from your pay — the least paperwork that still counts as a plan.
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Sharing the bills
Family Budget
The two-earner version with household categories.
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Where it all goes
Grocery Budget
The one category that eats personal budgets — contained week by week.
Open →

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between this and the monthly budget?
Audience and one column. The monthly sheet assumes household income — multiple paychecks, partner income — and reports a savings rate. This one assumes a single take-home pay and spends its extra column on each group's percentage of that pay, which is the more useful lens when every dollar has one source. If you're budgeting alone, start here; if money arrives from two people, the monthly or family sheet fits better.
What should each category share of my income be?
Common comfort lines, not laws: housing plus utilities near 30–35% of take-home, transportation under 15%, food 10–15%, savings and debt payments 20% if you can get there. City, season of life, and debt load bend all of these — the point of the % column isn't hitting someone else's ratios, it's noticing when your own move. A share that grew five points since spring is a question worth asking regardless of what any rule says.
How do I handle annual bills like insurance or car registration?
Divide by twelve and plan the monthly slice — a $600 premium is a $50 monthly line, not a December surprise. In the sheet, give it a row in the right group and treat the monthly amount as Planned every month; when the bill actually hits, the Actual for that month runs high and the % column shows the spike honestly. If you'd rather hold the money separately until bills land, that's a sinking fund — the paycheck budget's third sheet is built for exactly that.
Is this good for tracking spending if I don't want to plan?
It works — leave Planned blank and fill Actual from your statements, and you'll get honest group totals and shares of income. But that's a spending report, not a budget, and after a month or two of tracking most people find they want the comparison anyway. A gentle on-ramp: track for one month, then copy the actuals into the Planned column as next month's starting plan. Now you're budgeting, and the plan began as truth.
Updated through August 2026