Budget by Paycheck Spreadsheet Google Sheets & Excel

What you get

I have ADHD, and money used to mean remembering the electric bill the day after it was due. Monthly budgets never matched my life, because rent leaves with the first paycheck and the car payment with the second. So I built this sheet around paydays. You type your bills once with their due dates, and it hands each one to the right paycheck, weekly, bi-weekly, twice a month or monthly, up to five paychecks in a month. A yearly dashboard with charts shows where it all went.

What's inside (18 tabs)

• Start here: setup in 5 steps, how to open it in Google Sheets
• Setup: currency ($, €, £, CA$, A$), year (2026, 2027 or 2028), pay frequency, take-home pay, your own spending and bill categories
• 12 monthly Paycheck Planners: up to 5 paychecks a month with the dates filled in for you, income, bills, planned spending, savings and LEFT TO SPEND for each paycheck
• Bills: up to 30 monthly bills with due day, category and autopay
• Bill Calendar: pick a month and see every bill on its due day, paydays highlighted
• Expense Tracker: 600 rows with category drop-downs; actual spending flows into the planners
• Savings Goals: 6 goals with progress bars and how much to save per month
• Dashboard: income, bills, spent, saved, savings rate, spending by category (donut chart), planned vs actual by month, savings growth, goals chart

How it works

1. Choose how often you're paid: weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly (e.g. 1st and 15th) or monthly, and enter one recent payday. Every payday of the year is calculated for you, including the 3-paycheck months.
2. List your bills once. Each bill is assigned automatically to the last paycheck before its due date, even when that paycheck falls in the previous month.
3. Plan spending and savings for each paycheck and log what you spend. Planned vs actual updates by itself.

Colors and files

You get 4 files: the same planner in 3 color themes (Lavender, Blush, Sage), ready to use and empty, plus one EXAMPLE file filled with sample numbers so you can see every feature at work.

Compatibility

• .xlsx for Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer (Windows, Mac, Excel online) and Google Sheets (free Google account: upload and open, steps in the file); also opens in LibreOffice
• No macros, no add-ons, no subscription
• Formulas are locked so you can't break them by accident; your cells are shaded

Please note

Digital download: nothing is shipped. The photos show the example file. For personal budgeting, not financial advice. For personal use, please don't resell or share the file.

Made with the help of AI tools and checked by hand.