Create a Budget: Features

Key Features of the Excel version:

• Microsoft Excel based
• Create and manage a single personal budget
• Forecast your finances into the future up to one year
• Track up to two income categories and twenty expense categories
• Compare actual expenses to forecast
• Graphs and charts indicate spending habits

Simple, Flexible Budget Tool

• A personal budget custom built for you
  We take a painful process and make it easy by helping you create a budget to meet your needs based on your spending habits. Have a working budget within 15 or 20 minutes!
• Set and reach realistic financial goals
  Are you reaching your financial goals, or is your current budget just categorizing your expenses for you? BuildMyBudget’s approach to budgeting will increase your chances of reaching even the most difficult financial goal.
• User Friendly Interface
  Experience a simple interface which makes managing your budget easy and flexible. Get more done, and faster too.

Easily establish a working annual budget

• We will help you build a real working budget
  BuildMyBudget combines your average monthly income and expenses to create a ready-to-use twelve-month personal budget. If you don’t like what your budget looks like, you can easily adjust it before—or after you start using it. If you have short term goals like finding the quickest way to pay off a credit card, this is the right tool for you.
• Make adjustments
  As with every budget, unexpected expenses pop up! Our budget tool will reduce your stress as you overcome even the worst situation. You can easily and make adjustments to current and future months to ensure you remain on track to reaching your financial goals.

• Easily see where you are headed!
  The reason to have a budget is to make sure it helps you reach your financial goals. Unlike most budgeting programs, we help you forecast your income and expenses so you can see how much you will have in your checking and savings account in twelve months. What better way to know if you have a working budget than to see where your budget will take you?

Based on a program most people already have access to: Excel!

• Flexible and easy to use
  BuildMyBudget strives to make budgeting easy by using a program most people are familiar with. Even if you aren’t a pro with Excel, there are many free resources that will help you get up and running in no time.
• Available to most everybody
  Most people use Microsoft programs at home, at work, or can gain access by visiting a public library. BuildMyBudget’s custom budgeting solution utilizes Excel to provide you with the most flexible budgeting solution available.

Safe and Secure

• Keep your personal information secure
  Are you tired of having your account information floating around? We are too. These days you don’t know who can get to your information, and will therefore never ask you for any of it. BuildMyBudget’s approach to budgeting puts the power in your hands, where it belongs.

• Secure your budget
  We want your personal information to be secure. Once you have built your budget, you can save it to your computer and secure it in a variety of ways. You can password protect your computer, the folder containing your budget, or even the budget itself by creating a password.

Bring with you anywhere

• Available to you at any time
  BuildMyBudget provides you with the actual budget, so you have the flexibility to take it with you wherever you want, even if you don’t have an internet connection! Whether you keep your budget on your Windows based cell phone, an online server, a laptop, an SD card, or a flash drive—there are many ways to ensure that you always have your budget available to you.

See where you are spending

• Compare your actual spending to your monthly budget
  Once you have built your budget, we make comparing your actual expenses to your monthly budget simple.
• Learn from your spending
  Do you consistently spend too much money on eating out? BuildMyBudget will enable you to learn from your spending so you can make adjustments that will help you still meet your financial goals.

• Make better financial decisions
  BuildMyBudget’s approach to budgeting will help you to make better financial decisions. Unlike most budgeting programs, we show you how your decisions affect what you will have in your accounts in twelve months, so you can adjust your spending habits today.

Stretch your paycheck

• Maximize the power of your paycheck
  BuildMyBudget’s goal is to help you get the most out of your paycheck. If you knew that getting rid of HBO would help you pay off your credit cards six months sooner, would you do it? We are here to help you figure out what adjustments you need to make in order to reach your goals.
• Increase your savings
  Learn how to Pay Yourself First. BuildMyBudget will help you figure out how much you can transfer to your Savings account from each paycheck.

• Instantly know what you have left over to spend
  BuildMyBudget will calculate your remaining balance after you pay your bills each pay-period so that you can decide what to do with it! Whether you allocate your extra income to paying down a credit card or increasing your emergency fund, we will show you exactly how much you have to play with.

Take control over your finances

• Know your bills are being paid on time
  BuildMyBudget will help you take control of your financial future by showing you out of which paycheck you should pay each bill. Once you have set up your budget, you can rest assured that your bills are being paid on time.

• Avoid common money mistakes
  We will help you learn how to avoid common money mistakes by giving you the power to manage your bank account balances. You can say goodbye to overdrafting your accounts, impulse spending, buying with credit, and many other mistakes!

A new way to approach your budget

Pay all your bills in 15 minutes
Our approach to budgeting is to simplify it. BuildMyBudget will help you organize your bills by their due date, so you can sit down and pay them all at once. Whether it is by writing a check, paying online, or by utilizing an automatic payment system such as Billpay, you can sit down each pay period to pay all of your bills and be done within 15 minutes.

• Quickly and Easily Reconcile
  Many budgeting programs take hours to download and categorize your expenses. This means you spend all your free time looking at the past and no time looking at the future! The Budget Forecast allows you to quickly and easily enter your actual expenses so you can reconcile your budget. This will allow you time to make decisions about what really matters…your future!
• Pay Yourself First
  The absolute best benefit of BuildMyBudget is that you will soon be able to identify how much you can save each month by working backwards. What this means is that if you have $2000 in income for the month and you have $1400 budgeted for expenses, you have $600 left over. You can either let it sit in your checking account where you will probably spend it, or you can Pay Yourself First and transfer $400 to your Savings account. It might take a few months to get the hang of it, but once you have the ability to forecast how much you can save each month, Paying Yourself First becomes addicting.

Be a part of a community

• Common goals, common ground
  BuildMyBudget will help connect you with a community of people who are trying to achieve the same goals you are. Whether you have a question or have an answer to share, you can become part of an online community that is dedicated to helping you build your financial foundation.

• An objective resource
  BuildMyBudget is an objective resource for helping you to build your financial foundation. We aren't going to try and sell you insurance, stocks, bonds, gold or even advice. Every part of BuildMyBudget.com has been created to help you make objective, more informed decisions about your financial situation.