Create a Budget
You want to create a spreadsheet to track your monthly expenses. This will help you calculate how much you spend per month as well as totals and averages for the year.
- Open Excel and select a new Blank workbook
- Save As
- Location: Desktop
- Filename: Budget
- Create 6 column headers: Budget Item, October, November, December, Total, Average
- Make the header row Bold (Home/Font/Bold button)
- Add 4 row labels (in cells A2- A6) for Budget items: Rent, Phone, Heat, Cable, Food
- Insert 2 columns for January and February (Home/Cells/Insert/Insert Sheet Column. Repeat). Create header row labels.
- Enter amounts for each budget item in the January column (enter amounts on your example). Do NOT enter the formatting for decimals and the dollar sign; we will do that in the next step.
- Format cells in all monthly columns to be “Currency” (Home/Cells/Format/Format Cells/Numbers tab/select currency)
- Copy the values from January and paste in for February (Home/Clipboard/Copy)
- Change the values for February (change values to match your example)
- Enter calculations in the Totals column, tallying each row (Home/Editing/Autosum/Sum)
- Enter calculations in the Averages column, tallying each row (Home/Editing/Autosum/Average)
- Resize your columns. You can manually re-size or use auto fit columns (All cells button/double click between first 2 columns)
- Enter calculations for totals for the January monthly column (Home/Editing/Autosum/Sum)
- Label row “Monthly totals” and make the row Bold
- Copy and paste the formula for the other month’s totals (Home/Clipboard/Copy highlight cells and Paste)
- Enter October, November and December totals that are on the sample (watch the Total and Average columns update)
Challenge: make this for more of the year, create new columns for March through May and fill in random amounts. Double-check that your formulas are updated to include these new amounts.