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Kata Omel
Kata Omel

Posted on Originally published at sheetvault.shablony-pro.workers.dev

I built a free budget spreadsheet (no signup, no email wall) — here's the whole thing

#productivity #showdev #opensource #tutorial

I built a free budget spreadsheet (no signup, no email wall) — here's the whole thing

Most budget tools want your email, your phone number, and $8/month before you've even seen what they do. I went the other way: I built a plain .xlsx budget planner that downloads with one click. No signup, no tracking pixel on the download, no "start your free trial."

Here it is:

What's inside

Three sheets, real formulas (not pasted values):

  1. Setup — you list your income streams and fixed expenses once. Each row has an amount and a frequency (monthly / weekly / yearly), and the sheet normalizes everything to a monthly number.
  2. Monthly — 12 months across the top. Pulls your Setup numbers automatically, then you fill in variable spending per month. It computes what's left over after everything.
  3. Dashboard — one-glance summary: total monthly income, total fixed costs, average leftover, and a savings-rate readout with a simple traffic-light status (🟢 healthy / 🟡 tight / 🔴 over-extended).

The savings rate is the number I'd argue matters most. If income is irregular, chasing a fixed dollar savings goal is demoralizing — a rate (say, 20% of whatever came in) scales with reality. The Dashboard shows exactly that.

Why a spreadsheet and not an app

  • It works offline and forever. Nobody sunsets your .xlsx next quarter.
  • Your financial data stays on your machine.
  • You can open the formulas and audit them. An app is a black box; a spreadsheet is source code you can read.

Honest limitations

  • It's the "Lite" version: one currency, no debt payoff schedule, no investment tracking.
  • If you want those, I sell fuller templates on the same site (budget planner full version, mortgage payoff planner, couple bill-splitter) — that's how I keep the free one free. No pressure, the lite file is genuinely useful on its own.

If you want to tinker

The file is on GitHub (link above), so you can fork it, strip the formulas apart, or rebuild it in Google Sheets. If you make something cool out of it, I'd love to see it.

Questions about the formulas or how the frequency normalization works? Drop a comment — I'll answer.

Want the full version? The complete Monthly Budget Planner (6 sheets, auto dashboard with charts, Plan vs Actual variance tracking) plus 10 more templates — wedding budget, crypto portfolio, mortgage payoff, savings challenge — are in the SheetVault shop: sheetvault.sell.app ($4–$8, instant download, crypto payments welcome). The lite version above stays free forever.

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