Phew…

Phew! I say as I wipe my brow and gratefully sip my lovely cup of tea. I just finished putting together my ‘tutorials’ I suppose you could call them. It’s funny how you just can just go about happily making something and you think this is really easy until you try to explain to someone else how to do it, but really, I do believe my spreadsheet is easy to make and easy to use so I hope I have been able to translate that ease into my blog posts.

Now that is completed I shall take a few days to sit back and contemplate the next phase of my blog. At the time of writing this post I still haven’t actually worked out how to set it up so that I can offer my “I made this one earlier” spreadsheet to everyone for download, so if somehow you have stumbled across this blog before I’ve told anyone about it and are just champing at the bit to grab my fab little product, forgive me, it will be here soon I promise.

Now I guess I should go find a blog that will show me how to do something, how to upload a spreadsheet onto my blog that can be downloaded by others, hmmmmm.

You did it!

Well, Congratulations!

You have just completed your own budget spreadsheet!

I hope that you are amazed at how simple Excel Spreadsheets are to use once you know a few basic building techniques.

There are many more features that can be used in Excel to make a spreadsheet even more effective, such as bar graphs and pie charts to help you really start analysing your budget.

But what I am hoping to achieve with my BudgetMum system is a way to simplify YOUR budget and to show you how to plan ahead, keep track of spending and gain control without intimidating you with technical jargon and complex financial analysis.

I hope I have managed to help you simplify your financial life.

But one more question remains.. . .

Now that you know where all your money is hiding, which shoes will you buy with what you have left?

Enjoy your new found financial freedom and control!

Freezing part of your spreadsheet…

So now you know how to build a spreadsheet from scratch.

You can see what is coming into your household every income cycle, and you know exactly where it is going after that. As each week progresses you are moving along your spreadsheet and eventually you will be able to see what is coming in and out, BUT, you can no longer see the column that lets you know what those in and out things are right?

So here is the solution: 

You need to freeze the section of the spreadsheet that contains your written data, your headings, your specific income and expenses etc.

This is called ‘Freezing Panes’ and is super easy.

First you need to work out where you want to freeze the sheet, so let’s look at one of my sample spreadsheets again:

In this example I am selecting the cell directly beneath my income section and to the right of the headings column.

1. Click on the cell which you want to be the ‘freeze point’ as illustrated above.
2. At the very top of the spreadsheet select ‘window’
3. Now select ‘freeze panes’

Now when you scroll up and down, left and right, you will always be able to see your written headings column. To unfreeze, simply select ‘window’ again and select ‘unfreeze panes’.

Too easy right?

So there you have it, everything you need to know to build your own BudgetMum spreadsheet, but there is one more thing I’d like to say…