Ultimate 70/20/10 Budget Spreadsheet Template for Google Sheets & Excel

Where the split is set. Income goes in, and each of the three buckets gets a target, what has actually gone out against it, the gap between the two, and its real share of income. That last column is the one worth reading. A split is a claim about percentages, and the only way to know whether a month honoured it is to look at what the percentages actually came to - not at whether each bucket stayed under a number.

A line per cost on the necessary side, each with what was planned, what went out, the variance and that variance as a percentage. Giving this bucket a sheet of its own rather than a block on a shared page is what makes that detail workable. The necessary side is where it lives - it is the bucket with a dozen recurring bills in it, and squeezing that into a shared table is how households end up budgeting three lines called rent, food and everything else.

Five sample categories on the same columns as the other buckets, with room to add more - eleven rows in total. Saving tends to a handful of destinations rather than a long list, so most people will not need to fill the sheet.

Five sample categories, same shape and eleven-row capacity as Savings. Keeping debt payments and giving in one bucket is this split's particular choice, and it is a choice rather than a rule - the labels are yours to change if the two do not belong together for you.

The whole split across a year, month by month, with an average and a total per line. A single month tells you almost nothing about a percentage split: one large repair, one bonus, and the shares move. Twelve tells you whether the split describes how the money actually behaves, which is the only question worth asking of it.

Each bucket with its target percentage beside its actual percentage, the money figures for both, the gap, and a status. Reading the two percentage columns against each other is the fastest way to see whether the split held.