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Household budget

Create a household budget spreadsheet online to manage your family’s finances for free with customizable templates in Microsoft Excel.

Manage your family’s finances with household budget templates

Use free budget planner templates in Excel to organize your finances. Customize household budget categories like food, utilities, mortgage, and entertainment to align with your personal finances. Visualize your spending and savings goals with charts.

Customize household budget templates

Select from a range of household budget templates and customize it to align with your specific needs. Save time with pre-formatted budget calculator formulas that automatically display totals and differences. Add spending targets for different categories and then record what you spent.

A visual of a pre-formatted budget calculator showing monthly expenses and totals, designed to help users customize and track household spending.

Categorize expenses

Separate spending into categories for a clear financial picture. Edit labels for expenses like groceries, subscriptions, debt payments, and discretionary spending. Upload data from a finance app CSV download to update the template quickly.

A green folder with Excel UI for opening a new spreadsheet

Put financial principles into practice

Use a household budget to work toward your financial goals. Grow an emergency fund to use for home renovations or auto repairs. Allocate funds each payday to avoid overspending and pay down debt with the 50/30/20 budgeting strategy.

Person working on a laptop at home with a dog nearby.

Leverage AI tools to budget more effectively

Chat with Copilot in Excel to choose the right financial formula or learn how it works. Have Copilot create a graph to visualize your household finances and analyze your top spending categories to see how they’ve changed over time.

Green folder icon with a bar chart showing top spending categories.

Use auto-calculating spreadsheets

Use budget calculator tools to total expenses by category and see your positive or negative cash flow at any time. Use formulas to highlight where you’ve overspent to review your budget more effectively.

Bar chart labeled Monthly Breakdown showing categorized expenses.

Visualize your financial progress

Use a pie chart to visualize spending by category. Create bar graphs to compare spending over time and mark progress toward your financial goals. Use chart to see how recurring bills are distributed throughout the month.

Pie chart labeled Budget Summary with various expense categories.

Collaborate with family online

Easily share your budget spreadsheet with your family members online for easy collaboration. Help your kids budget funds from a seasonal job or manage a college budget. Collaborate on a wedding budget with your partner and wedding planner.

Family members gathered around a table looking at a laptop.

Versatile household budget spreadsheets for everyone

  • Families: manage monthly income and savings.

  • Couples: save for a shared vacation or buying a home.

  • College students: manage financial aid and school expenses.

  • Professionals: minimize discretionary spending to plan for the future.

  • Freelancers: manage income from multiple sources.

A graphic representing typical budgeting scenarios like saving for vacations, managing student finances, and reducing discretionary spending.

How to build a household budget in Excel

  1. Choose a household budget template that best aligns with financial goals

  2. Modify the expense categories to match your situation

  3. Add an income and planned expenses at the start of the period

  4. Enter what you spent at the end of the period

  5. Compare actuals to projected expenses and see account totals

User interface for creating a blank spreadsheet

Frequently asked questions

Create household budgets in Microsoft Excel