Is 2026 the year you are determined to get your personal finances in order? I have put together a planner that might help you achieve that goal.
The planner has 3 monthly components
- Budget Planner page – use this page to determine what your monthly cashflow is expected to be.
- Income: your forecasted income from payroll and other sources
- Savings: the amount you will set aside for future spending or emergencies. Life often throws unknown unknown, expenses that we aren’t expecting with a cost we can’t predict. Despite this, setting money aside helps us be prepared for these events (non-routine car maintenance, income hiccups like a government shutdown, unexpected medical requirements, etc.).
- Envelopes: your known unknowns. Those recurring expenses that you know you’ll need to pay, but the actual amount is variable (groceries, gasoline, clothing, gifts, etc.)
- Bills: non-negotiable known known expenses such as rent/mortgage payment, insurance, daycare, etc. These payments don’t fluctuate much from month-to-month.
- Debt: also non-negotiable, these are known known payments to repay debt. These are separated from the Bills category for greater awareness since paying off debt is an important strategy for reducing the interest paid to others in order to someday increase investments to earn interest paid to you.
- Expenses: these known known expenses are typically very negotiable in terms of your ability to adjust (or eliminate) the amount spent. These would include subscriptions, cable tv, cellphone service, among others.
- The Summary box is the place to take the totals from the gray boxes at the bottom of each of the others and determine the result of your monthly income minus the others. Ideally, the result is $0.00, meaning all dollars are allocated for a specific purpose.
- Monthly Calendar – use this page to plot when income is scheduled to post and when each monthly expenses is due to be paid. This allows you to determine when money must be available in your checking account versus when money can be moved to savings accounts to meet your savings and future expense plans from the Budget Planner page.
- Transaction Register – use these pages to enter deposits and withdrawals. Add deposited funds to your account balance and subtract funds spent on your various categories like Bills, Debt, Envelopes and Expenses, or transfers to your Fund accounts for savings or for smoothing out variable costs (see Chapter 13 of my book on Sinking Funds). In the N/W column, make an honest assessment whether your purchase or payment was a NEED or a WANT. At the end of the month carry your balance to the next month’s transaction register. Once the subtraction is accomplished, add the money to a Funds Tracking page (next topic) .
At the end of the planner are several pages to track Fund balances, like savings accounts and sinking fund envelopes. You can have as many or as few funds as necessary to meet your Budget Planner objectives.
Download the planner and print out your copy double-sided (flip long edge) to place in a binder and start 2026 on the right foot.
