I worked for it, and it was not easy, nor was it fun.

I was $60,000 in debt and I put every free penny I had of my net income towards my debt.

This was probably 50% – 90% of my income at times.

Note: I was a consultant living out of a suitcase, so by the nature of my job, I was able to channel a lot of my net income each paycheque towards my $60,000 in debt.

I watched every penny, and followed a budget, much like the one I created for myself below.

And that’s it. The big secret. Of course, there are a lot more details to the 18 months it took to clear my $60,000 debt, but that’s the gist of it.

INTERESTED IN MY BUDGETING SHEET?

So why should I buy the Budgeting sheet?

Other than helping charities?

Well, this is THE TOOL that has helped me get out of debt.

If you want, you can read about my life as captured in mini posts here and there on the blog: THE FB STORY, about my background and how I got into personal finance.

I had tried many things before, many budgets like Mint, Wesabe, Microsoft Money, Quicken, free ones, etc but NONE of them let me categorize and analyze my expenses and sort them the way I wanted to.

I just couldn’t find a budgeting sheet that did what I wanted, and tracked what I wanted to track, the way that I wanted to track it.

So I created this Excel sheet, and here are the results of the sheet.

You can clearly see when I first started using the sheet, in June 2007. The jump in the chart is incredible, even to me, because I started tracking, budgeting and being careful with my money which helped me get out of debt sooner.

FB’S DEBT HISTORY
Click on the image to make it larger

FB’S NET WORTH HISTORY
(Assets – Liabilities = Net Worth)
Click on the image to make it larger.

What are some key features?

Remember, I have two sheets: Dynamic or Simple.

The Dynamic one has EVERYTHING you see below.

The Simple one only has a plain budget, expense tracking and a year end summary.

No automation of expense tracking up to your budget, no graphs, charts, debt repayment, assets management, retirement calculator or net worth included.

This is the basic sheet where you set your budget:

Then you track your expenses here:

For the Dynamic version, you won’t have to do anything to make your expenses match your budget.

No excel formulas to learn or know at all: It AUTOMATICALLY takes your expenses & put it in the right categories at the top.I totally revamped that in Version 4.0 and made it super easy.

Nor will you have to worry about misspelled or mistyped Category names — I put in a fixed menu. See?

And you get a monthly pie chart of what you’ve been spending your money on (not available in the Simple Budgeting Sheet):

Which feeds into another budget that shows you your YEARLY spending summary:

You can also track your Assets and Debt to calculate your Net Worth (not available in the Simple Budgeting Sheet)

Debts shown here:

Assets shown here:

Hey, I don’t have a PC. What about MAC users?

For you Mac users, I got this email from someone who bought my sheet:

Thanks so much! Just FYI.. I have a mac and use open office, and it works perfectly. you may want to let people know that on your blog

What version of Excel is this?

It really doesn’t matter. But I made it in the 1997 – 2005 version. It will open and work in any version of Excel.

Can you customize it for € users?

Of course! Pay  for the sheet and I’ll send you the € version (please request it in your Paypal notes, or contact me beforehand to let me know that’s what you want).

Hey, I also don’t have Excel at all. Can I use Google Docs or something else?

I’m afraid not. Google Docs just isn’t robust enough to handle all the formulas and stuff I put in the sheet.

Your best bet is to download something called: Portable Open Office.

It’s a suite of programs much like Microsoft’s Office, that works on any computer and can be ported to any computer via USB key.

So for example, you download the Open Office Portable Program Suite (~90MB), and you install the suite onto a USB key or anywhere you want on your computer.

Then when you want to use the program (Open Office Calc is like Excel), you just go to that folder on your USB key or the program on your computer where you installed it, and run it.

I should note that it does not look as great as it would in Excel.

It’s kind of choppy, and for me, as an Excel-user, it’s not as nice or as easy to use.

But it’s a free option if you don’t have MS Office.

It looks like this in Open Office. All the white spaces I normally have are gone, and the letters look a bit strange to me, but everything works technically. Just isn’t as pretty.

Who has reviewed the sheet and how many have you sold?

Well, Louise over at My Journey to Eliminate Debt was one of the first PF’ers who bought the sheet and wrote a rave review on it. *heart*

Need more proof?

Not so petty cash just wrote a (2010) rave review about it, and it really goes into detail. She tried every budgeting sheet out there (like myself), and says mine rocks

Miss More Bucks loves it, High Heeled Diaries seconds that, Young Black and Prosperous and Northern Living Allowance love using it too!

The general response from personal feedback and emails has been: It’s been working out FAB! Love the colours and visuals and it all makes sense to me now.

Here are some word for word testimonials from happy people:

Hello,

I purchased your debt tracker excel sheet last June, and when I started I was about $22,000 in debt.

A year later, I have $3500 left!!!!

I’m super excited, and wanted to thank you for your sheet and blog. I’m almost debt free!!

Rachel

Here’s another rave review:

True to the word fabulous, your excel spreadsheet is FABULOUS! This is what I’ve always wanted, a fully automated spreadsheet.

I had created a spreadsheet which is kind of similar to this a few years back but since I am not familiar with excel and the only function I know is summation (LOL!), I transferred to moneytrackin which actually does not cater to my needs.

Believe me, I am in great search for a personal finance tool that I am almost willing to enroll as a financial adviser for AGF just to have AGF’s FNA program, then I chanced upon your website. Not as high tech as FNA but I TRULY LOVE your spreadsheet! This is what I need. THUMBS UP TO THAT!

MARIA

And here’s another wonderful email I got.. It totally made my week.

I bought your budget sheet in May 08. I LOVE the sheet. I was just wondering have you updated it at all?

If so i was going to buy it again.

If not i will just keep using the one i have.

I know i mentioned this before on one of your Comments, but whenever you get down to Dallas, my wife and i would love to take you and your man out to dinner sometime.

Thanks again for the great blog.

MAT

Here is another happy newly minted budgeter:

Hi FB!

I just want to let you know how fantastic your budgeting sheet is! I wanted to have a good play with it before letting you know how I went, and after using it for a few weeks it has been good to me.

I knew I spent a lot of money in certain areas, and didn’t realise I spent so much in others (toiletries?!), and lots of little money here and there. I’m not in any debt and am able to continuously save, but seeing all those little bits of money I justify to myself is okay to spend ($2 here is nothing… $5 for lunch there is okay for the convenience… ) add up is really making me think about exactly how much worth it is to me. A few dollars here and there is no big deal, but seeing those few dollars add up to double digits at the end of the month for unnecessary things makes me wonder

I had drawn up my own scrappy excel budget, which served me well to keep track of my expenditure but didn’t tell me anything about my spending habits. Your budget has so many functions that I just love to look at and see how much I spend where and how much I’m worth… it’s just fantastic!

Jess

And another, recently emailed by Katrina:

Thanks so much for putting this together. I noticed in your word instructions that you wanted to hear feedback from people so I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been up to with it.

I’m an accountant and I’ve been looking for a budget like this for a while now for my own personal finances.

Being 25, I found my finances didn’t warrant spending loads of money on advanced software to keep track of everything, but basic programs were too simplified and didn’t let me know everything I wanted to see about where my assets were heading.

I’ve been running a basic Excel sheet for the past two years but I didn’t have the working knowledge of Excel to get the forecasting information I wanted from it, or the time to sit down and figure it out.

It was all floating around in my head where I wanted to end up and what I was doing to get there and I really needed to be able to better organise my data and have it be visually available to me in the form of charts and graphs.

I’ve already set up the balance of my 2010 and 2011 finances using your budget.

I used your calculators and graphs a little differently to figure out my debt and savings allocation plans and I loved that I could put it all together to see where I needed to be and what would get me to the balances I was after each month.

The charts are really motivating, and like you I really enjoyed all the colour and being able to compare my budgeted spendings to my actual spendings.

I am currently saving for a house deposit and a wedding as my main money guzzlers at the moment over the next 16 months, so the charts will remind me of my progress and why I don’t need that extra pair of shoes!

It is also quite easy to adapt the sheets to your unique circumstances, whether you are financially savvy or not.

You made everything simple for people from all walks of life, but at the same time made it adaptable enough for people with more advanced financial skills as well.

What makes it even better is that you have generously donated the proceeds from all your hard effort as well. Thanks for a great budgeting tool!

- Katrina

And since May 2008,a whopping 130 people have purchased my budgeting sheet!

Still got cold feet?

My most recent (and lovely) buyer Jen wrote in:

Holy moly, I’ve been fiddling with the spreadsheet all morning, and it is awesome.

I’m a total Excel neophyte, and it was still so easy to figure out.

Your example sheet and instructions were very clear and helpful. Wow.

It’s funny because after submitted my payment last night, I started to have a twinge of buyer’s remorse.

Well, it was more like buyer’s anxiety.

$50 to a stranger on the internet seemed a little risky, but this sheet is totally worth it.

Thank you so much for the time you put into creating this!

Uh huh, what else? There has to be more.

I think it’s a fantastic cause and 100% of the proceeds for all of 2010 will go to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.