My dad works for IBM and he uses spreadsheets for everything.  I guess I inherited that from him, because I love making spreadsheets to organize my life.  I recently blogged about how I planned out the categories of my budget  for my New Year’s Resolution of learning to control my spending and save money.   Now, I’ve put all that together into a spreadsheet, so that every week, I can enter what I’ve spent and where.

Here’s a screen shot of the main page of my budget:

By entering what I spend each week, I can make sure that I’m not going over the amount I have budgeted.  I’m keeping the non-essentials part of the budget flexible by budgeting for the total spend per month, as opposed to the amount spent on each category.  

This second part of my budget is where I keep track of exactly what I am buying, when and where.  That way, I can track my spending and figure out if there’s some areas where I need to be more reasonable and cut back.

I may just be an organization freak when it comes to spreadsheets, but using this method really helps me to be disciplined.

Sorry if this post was a bit on the dry side.  I promise more style related stuff will be coming soon!