Budgeting isn’t particularly fun. We’ve recently started using a simple, homemade Google form to augment our envelopes and automation that we normally use. So far, we’ve had great success with it!
Even if you try and change the name to spending plan or whatever, its still a budget. It’s not fun. So I attempted to make it as simple as possible to track spending as we go.
Current Budget System
We already use a system of envelopes and automation for almost all of our expenses, but there are several expenses that are hard to plan for like gas, utilities, etc. We also wanted to have a way to keep track of our spending on trips too. My solution was to create a Google form and then use that to help track expenses.
Creating the Google Forms
Here’s what I did. I created a couple simple, 2-question and 3-question Google forms. The first was for our trip to Legoland this summer. The next one is our “Monthly Un-Budgeted Expenses” form. Then I saved a shortcut to the home screen on my wife’s phone and my phone so we can enter things with just a few taps.
I made the first form with just two categories, what the item was and how much it cost. Once I tested it out, I added a shortcut to the Google sheet where the responses are recorded. From that I was able to pop in a quick formula to add expenses as they occurred. This showed the total amount spent.
Trial Run at Legoland Was a Success!
We tried it out first on our trip to Legoland and it worked really well! I was able to keep track of spending while also being able to show my wife on the fly that we were under budget and could spend money still. This is super helpful because we have a lot of competing money scripts – I like to spend; my wife likes to save.
Overall, it was a great trip and my son said it was “the best trip ever!” I consider that an overwhelming success!
Making a Google Form for Monthly Expense Tracking
With the trial out of the way, I made a copy of the original Google form and added a column for categories to use on a monthly basis. We’re now in our second month using it and already we’re keeping expenses under control as well as identifying areas for adjustments. For example, we haven’t updated our yearly expense fund items to include things we now need like shoes for my son and school supplies.
Don’t worry, my son hasn’t been going without. We just haven’t tracked those expenses as a part of our monthly savings toward those items. This will help us keep track of where all the “leakage” is coming from so we can update our monthly savings goal for the yearly expense fund.
Budgeting Our Second Trip and Counting
We just completed a trip back home to Missouri and used the Google form just like we did for Legoland. Once again, it worked really well. I was even able to do an estimated daily spend to help show my wife that we were still on track and under budget for the trip. I feel like this really helped keep her concerns about spending in check. We came in way under budget too, so now we have more trip money to put toward our next trip. We’re going to Disney, so we’ll definitely need it! Overall, I just wanted to share this with you as another possible tool in your budgeting toolbox. If you have more specific questions, please feel free to shoot me a note at hello@start100k.com.