


keep a copy of bills you pay during this period.keep track of everything you buy, from groceries to a daily cup of coffee.To keep track of where your money is going, take note of what you spend.

Every dollar you spend affects your overall budget.įor example, if you spend $2.50 a day on coffee, it will cost you more than $900 a year. Tracking your money will help you figure out what comes in and what goes out of your pocket. Having an emergency fund will help you reduce financial stress and avoid getting trapped in a debt cycle. That is why you should start by saving a small amount on a regular basis. These amounts can sometimes seem out of reach. Your emergency fund should provide you with enough money to cover your living expenses for 3 to 6 months. To deal with unexpected situations, create an emergency fund. saving to have children, to go to school or to retire.saving to buy a home, a car or booking a trip.Make saving for those goals part of your budget. Identify your short-term and long-term goals. Take these simple steps before you make your budget. What to consider before you start a budget have more money for things that are important to you.are planning for a major purchase or a life event.feel like you’re not in control of your finances.It guides your spending to help you reach your financial goals. Making a budget can help you balance your income with your savings and expenses. It helps you figure out how much money you get, spend and save. Select RESPONSES from the top of your form and then click the spreadsheet icon to rename the spreadsheet (if you want).A budget is a plan that helps you manage your money. Set Up CalculationsĮvery entry from your form is gathered in a nicely formatted spreadsheet at Google Sheets. A colorful form might make tracking expenses fun, if that’s at all possible! The paint icon at the top of the page is where you go for those changes. This isn’t necessary, but your form can also include images, headings, and a unique color scheme. You can share this with anyone you want to use the form with, or send it to yourself so that it’s easily accessible from your phone. Use the preview button (the eye icon) at the top of Google Forms to get the URL to your form.This will come in handy later when we interpret all the results from the form. Use the suggestions above, like the payment method and description question, to provide yourself with as much detail as possible. Continue through the form making all the different questions you want to ask yourself each time you buy something.Select the first box and change it to Short answer.Rename your form to something recognizable.You’ll learn that editing the form is extremely easy, so you shouldn’t have any problem customizing it for yourself.

We’re using broad questions with even broader answer options to show how this works. This is a sample expense tracker, so yours, by no means, needs to look exactly like this one. So, if you do want a really specific field for something, just make it not required so that you don’t have to use it for every transaction. On that note, you can make any of the fields in your expense tracker form required or not required. You don’t necessarily need a field that asks what kind of food you’re buying, for example, unless this is solely a food expense tracker you might want to also use this for recording rent payment and phone bills. When deciding what to include in a Google Forms expense tracker, keep in mind that you want the fields to be as broad as possible so that they can apply to anything you’re purchasing.
