This is exactly how I started budgeting but eventually I wanted something Web-based, to share with my wife while I was traveling. We tried emailing our budget spreadsheet back and forth for a while. Finally, we moved to Google Docs and were satisfied for a time but the Web developer in my craved something more.

I don’t want this to be so much a product pitch because I am passionate about budgeting but I created BudgetSketch to be the simplest, budget creation tool available on the Web. I know that it won’t appeal to all the nerds as Dave Ramsey calls them but the free-spirits won’t run screaming from it, I hope!

Again, great post. Good luck to you whether or not you choose to use BudgetSketch. You’re heading in the right direction IMHO.

Personally, I prefer the one I created because it lets me know exactly how much I have spent in each category before the end of the month and how much left I can spend. Basically, it is the same concept as the envelope system except I am not using cash. My husband and I have problems spending more than what we budgeted, so we hope that this way will help us to be more disciplined. It will also show us exactly how far under or over our budgeted amount we went.

I am definitely open to more ways to enhance it, though. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to let me know.

http://www.josephsangl.com/tools/