Making your first budget might seem intimidating. You’re probably thinking, “What kinds of expenses should I even budget for?” To that we’d say, budget for all of the expenses you can anticipate and even the ones you can’t.
If you’ve just signed up with Goodbudget and need a place to start, check out the samples below to help get you going. Feel free to mix, match, and tweak it to work for you! And don’t pay too much attention to the Budgeted Amounts — they’re just placeholders. You can update that with a number that makes sense for you.
Simple Budget Sample
Student Budget Sample
Detailed Budget Sample
Happy budgeting,
The Goodbudget Team
21 thoughts on “3 Sample Budgets to Help You Create Your Own”
I like what you are doing with the boot amp and samples. I am 75 years old and not to sure how to leave comments after each day’s assignment. Is there a way to keep my comments private?
Hi Charlie – Thanks for posting! All comments are public. If you want to take private notes for yourself, that’s definitely encouraged! We’d recommend using pen and paper for private notes/comments or someplace digital, like Google Docs. If you’d like to post a public comment after you finish an assignment, just follow the same procedure you did to post this comment. You can find the Budget Bootcamp assignments here. Hope that helps!
I like the detailed budget best. It will help me keep track of annual subscriptions, mortgage, insurance, vehicle registrations, etc… When those expenses come due I’m always surprised and then we are back in debt.
Couldn’t wait ’til Saturday to start – had to ‘dive in’ now. But I do have a question about creating envelopes and accounts. I like the detailed budget example, but I pay a lot of those envelope items (mthly/qtrly/ann expenses) via credit cards. I have quite a few items auto charged to 2 credit cards to eliminate my needing to remember who gets paid when. These credit cards are paid in full every month and may also be used for ‘regular’ purchases. My question is this – when it comes to creating debt accounts for these credit cards, am I correct in thinking the budgeted value for these accounts should reflect ‘regular’ spending projections as those auto-charged items would have their own envelopes? I know the lessons haven’t touched on actually creating envelopes and accounts yet, but I just want to make sure this will work with how I work. Thanks…
Hi Vanessa — if your credit cards are being paid in full each month, you should put them in your household as Credit Card Accounts and not Debt Accounts. As a separate issue, if you’re creating a Debt Account, you will indeed do as you’re suggesting and set the “budgeted amount” to be the amount you usually pay for (and budget for) each month. Let us know at support@goodbudget.com if you have any further questions about this!
I am just getting into this and so far I love it. I love the envelope idea. This works great for me. I think I like the detailed budget the best myself
I need the detailed budget sample , how can I do that?
Hi myriam – Just take a look at the image of the list of Envelope under the Detailed Budget section. You can recreate all of those Envelopes in your own Household, or pick and choose the categories that work for you. Hope that helps!
Helpful for figuring what envelopes I might need.
Having the names of envelopes I might need is helpful
Feeling a little overwhelmed and also quite exciting to get started! I was using another online app but it kept getting more and more complicated with every update. I’m a big believer in the K.I.S.S. method. I’m delighted to have found Goodbudget and even more delighted that there is a focus on giving.
I like the detailed budget sample. I think it would be awesome to know exactly where our money is going.
Seeing these helps remember a lot of yearly expenses that might slip your mind when you first sit down to budget.
The detailed budget is AMAZING. I am definitely going to work toward creating my own detailed budget. Right now, the draft I have created is simpler, but I already feel like I have a much better grasp on my expenses. A more detailed budget will be that much more helpful.
My comments are not showing up
Hi Joseph — sorry about that! We hold comments for approval to prevent spam, but I’ve just approved them all and you should be able to see them now!
I am so a person for a detailed budget. I’m just switching from student life to “real” adult hood and now that I’ve got to pay my bills from my own pocket I definitely want to make sure I’m not wasting my money and want to know exactly on what I spend it it.
I did mine on excel and also added a line to calculate percentages to know how much an expense represents versus my income.
Think a combo of simple and detailed, don’t have a huge variety of expenses, no children but do have pets, seems a little overwhelming but with a sample(s) can see what the end result could be.
I will start with the simpler budget with the intention of detailing some envelopes.
Really good idea to see where the money goes.
I like the detailed the best
We have been budgeters for years and really like how GoodBudget lines up with what we’ve done with another software. I just retired and down to just one income so a good time to transition. Even with lots of budget years behind us I’m a little anxious that it will go smoothly so I like the bitesized lessons. Thank you for the direction on recording credit cards that are paid off every month.