The Best Budget Template for 2026: Say Goodbye to Guessing, Overspending, and Tracking Every Dollar | 513

0:00The best budget template in 2026 is the one you'll still be using in December. Ooh, does that hit hard? Are you the kind of person that starts like three different kinds of budgets and never finishes any of them? Maybe, maybe. And here's a problem. If your budget requires motivation and willpower, it's a bad budget. Bad budget, bad budget. Yeah. Stop looking for the perfect template. You don't have a template problem. You have a system problem. And that is definitely something that we figured out after years of coaching. Yeah. It's not you. It's the budget. It's the silly, weird budget that you're using.

0:36It's okay. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. Because one thing that we know for sure, Vanessa, is a lot of budget templates don't help you plan spending. They really just go with whatever. They show you what already happened. Yeah. And if you make good money and you still feel broke, it's because your budget isn't built for your life. It's not matching your real life. Most templates look good on paper, but don't help you in real life when money is coming and going and your life is also coming and going. Yeah. So today we're giving you the test for what makes a budget template actually work.

1:04And we're telling you what to look for in the best budget templates for 2026. Okay. So we're going to go through some things that you should be asking yourself. If you're looking for a new budget, then we're going to also tell you some common traps that budget templates have. And we're going to give you the features that you want to make sure that you have in the best budget template in 2026. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt free but you don't want to live on beans and rice?

1:37Or you don't want to give up those pumpkin spice lattes? Hey, it's okay if you don't already know how to budget or if you're using credit cards to get through the month. Hey, it's okay if you want seem like you have your finances all together or you're not on the same page with your spouse when it comes to finances we know what you're doing probably isn't working but guess what you're in the right place we're shana and vanessa we're best friends business partners and master financial coaches trained by dave ramsey we've been in business since 2019 helping hundreds of amazing people like you create budgets get out of debt stop living paycheck to paycheck and know exactly what to do with their money.

2:13In this podcast, we'll share with you everything we know, plus everything we're working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals. We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages, and even bring your kids in on the conversation. We can help you no matter where you're at, whether you're the single mom who's never had$500 in her savings account or the millionaire who's paid off four real estate mortgages. And we're not going to shy away from the tough love. We'll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you at the same time.

2:40This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. So one of the first questions, Shana, that I think we want to ask ourselves is, okay, will I still use this after all the January motivation wears off? Right. Am I still actually going to use this or am I just in a moment like right now full of motivation and I'm willing to sit down for three hours and try to figure this thing out and then I'm never going to look at it again? If that's it, let's go. No. Thank you next. Yeah. And when I get paid, is it going to tell me exactly what to do with all my paychecks? Yeah. Sometimes you're just, with some of these budgets, you're putting stuff down, but you don't actually know what to do once you're done putting stuff down on paper.

3:18So you need to make sure that you are very clear on that. Yeah. And does it give me a clear spending number? And can I trust it without guessing? Yes. No. If you're going to use a new budget, there needs to be no guesswork required. Let's stop that. That's the 2025 thing. We're in 2026. No guessing. Yeah. And does it require one checking account with a million transactions or does it separate bills from spending? So it's obvious. I think this is like a leading question. I know we might be on our way to, but seriously, if it still feels messy and chaotic, then it's not the right budget. And then if something, when stuff pop up, pops up, because one of the number one things we hear, Vanessa, why budgets fail is something popped up or I didn't see this one thing coming or whatever.

3:59And then I just gave up kind of deal. Does your budget template help you figure out how to plan for those, how to incorporate that into your budget so that you don't feel like by the third week of the month, you're done and you're just out. You're all done with budgeting because it blew up already. Yeah. Like the car repair or school fee trip or something, like something popped up and you didn't know what to do. That quote unquote wasn't in your budget. So now you're like, I'm out. And that happens. And that's what we see. Because listen, those unexpected expenses we know are expected. They're going to happen.

4:26But our budget system helps you plan for those a little better. Here's a question they can ask, Vanessa. I'm asking this personally Does it work for busy moms with sports, Amazon, life happening, kids that are doing college visits, running their own business? Does it work for those people? I feel like it's reading my brain. That's what I needed to work for personally. But really, truly, does it work for your real life? Or is it only like meant for this very perfect Pinterest perfect budget life? Or you know what, Vanessa? A lot of things I see is like these sweet 20-somethings with their sweet little like five things on their budget list.

5:03And I'm like, no, we're a little more complicated over here in land of being 40. Yeah, for sure. But here's the thing is I we've seen the way that we do budgeting, right? Work for the high schooler, for the college student, for the newlyweds, for the like all the transitions of life. And so those are the questions that you need to ask yourself budget. Is it going to do all this stuff for me? Or is it going to make my life more complicated? And I have to track things and spend a lot of time in it? Is there like requirements involved? No, we don't. Yeah. When we went looking for a budget, when we were going to get one to use with our clients, Vanessa, we went and looked and they were very extensive.

5:40There's a lot of things that you, that they had in their budgets. And we were like, I feel like I'm getting a big homework assignment and a big project that I don't feel like I just need it to be in and out, maybe in and out. I need to be good to go. And I don't want to have to learn how to use it in order to use it. And here's something that's harsh that I'm going to say with a very loving heart is you get what you pay for. So a lot of those budgets are like 99 cents, a dollar,$5. They're like, they're super cheap, but it requires you to be involved in it 99 % of the time. Cause Shana said, it's literally like a, like a homework project.

6:11You have to do every single weekend. You have to be that involved in it. Cause you have to track a bunch of stuff. No, thank you. I would rather invest in something that is going to long-term help me and my money. Yeah. No tracking. We can't like all of those ones that we saw, there was pages dedicated just to tracking, not here for it. But also, a lot of budgets are so simplistic that they don't plan for irregular expenses or even irregular income or surprise things or whatever. So it's just so generic that they don't do that. And that's going to end up biting you in the butt. Yeah, for sure.

6:42Another thing, Shana, is that there's no paycheck plans, meaning they have no idea. So when they go to make a budget for the month, they don't understand how to break that up per paycheck. Because we hear people say, I have this paycheck pay these bills and this paycheck pays that bill. the way that we do our paycheck plan is better than that. It's not, we're not budgeting per paycheck, but we're giving your paycheck a plan. And so they feel like they're not successful because they can't budget for the whole month. Yeah. And another thing that we see out there is a lot of things that are cookie cutter.

7:11So you have to make your money fit into this 20, 50, 30 or whatever, or this needs and wants. You have to make your budget, your life fit into someone else's framework instead of just having a framework that fits your life. That's, that's what we're going to get into or what we're offering. But yeah, no, don't get caught up in having to do this strict cookie cutter method. That's not like your life is too unique to do that. All right, budget besties, it's time for some real talk. You don't need another budget. You need a budget system. Our simplified budget system is what you've been looking for.

7:45It's going to allow you to be bougie on a budget. You'll be able to easily set up a system that runs automatically and shows you exactly where your money is going. And it's going to give you permission to spend. Everybody loves that. Yeah. It's straightforward, pretty, and packed with walkthrough videos that break down the exact methods we use with our clients to get out of debt, set up a bills account, separate spending, build savings buckets, and end the paycheck-to-paycheck feel. If you're new to budgeting, this is the perfect way to jump in. And if you're already a budget nerd like us, you're about to meet your new obsession.

8:19This is the upgrade to your finances that you need right now. Yeah. So head on over to budgetbestdc.com forward slash budget and grab yours. Now back to today's show. Vanessa, I feel like by now they know that we happen to know the best budget template for 2026. We happen to just have an inside knowledge about that. We might have a little special something for them for sure. If you haven't heard our story, we tried to go and partner with other people that were way smarter than us that already had a budget out there to use in our business, use for our clients. And we couldn't find one that wasn't complicated.

8:53That wasn't had weird words, weird words. That wasn't cookie cutter. Like we couldn't as far as fixed variable. Or just had like a lot of extra work, a lot of extra to do. And they were all tracking, like all of it. We really spent a lot of time looking for the best budget for you guys. We couldn't find one. So what we did, we created our own. Yes. And it's really great that we're talking about this right now because there's so many, we're going to tell you all the features of the best budget template in 2026, which is what we have. We have a simplified budget system. That's the best one in 2025, six spoiler alert.

9:21I don't know if we mentioned that, but one thing really that's interesting to think about is you have one workbook for the entire year. And it's not that you want this, but you know how you have your tax return and it's for the, is that what you're saying? That's exactly what I think about it. Yeah. And it's like, I have that whole year wrapped up. I can go back and look at it if I want. It's all there. It's the same here. You're going to use this all year. It's going to do a a lot of cool things for you so that you don't have to do a lot of extra work. It's going to be all organized in one year.

9:47And then each year you'll just restart it. Yeah. And another thing to recognize that it's pretty, it's not cluttered at all. You actually want to do it and look at it. And so I just think that it's very airy. Even the husbands love it. We have a lot of guys who compliment on how pretty it is as well. And again, it just, because it's pretty, because it's airy, it makes you want to do it. Yeah. And I know that, listen, this is financial coaching for women. We are talking to women. So maybe you, maybe men don't think that's important, but we do as women, like we want something that's inviting to look at.

10:17When I go in here, I don't feel like there's a lot of red or dark colors or whatever. I needed to just like also add to my, like my aesthetic and my aura. I needed to help me not hurt me. And so that is a very deliberate thing. We made it as little clutter, as little harshness on your eyeballs as possible. So hopefully you feel like it's inviting and I want to come look at it and do it and actually budget. Yeah. And let's, we're going to talk about the actual budget sheet here. You've got 12 months already for you to use and it does the math for you. It auto-populates each month. Again, if you want to go in there and tweak it, you can.

10:49But I think the biggest part here is to know that you can put in January, and again, the rest of the 11 months are done for you and you can go in there and update as you see fit. So real quick, I think that's really important because you don't have to keep re-entering it. And also you're not making a copy because then why would that be bad if they just make one and then they could make a copy? What's not good about that? because that's what we that's what we used to do so they could right yeah we're saying they don't have to because it's already there for them and you don't have to make a copy you don't have to do anything it's already all there so if you look here if you follow along on the video we have we're showing you january's budget and how we put that in and then february's budget automatically does exactly the same stuff but then if we went to add something in january that was new like maybe we got a oh yep maybe we got a dog and we have to feed it don't worry about my typing and then I'm going to say it's 50 bucks a month, right?

11:41And then all of a sudden I go over here and it's also on February. It's so cool like that. It does it. So it'll, it'll, you'll get the whole thing. And then as you update it throughout the year, it will continue to update forward. And yeah. And so if that was the number in January and it's only going to be 40 bucks in February, you can go directly into that cell in February and change it. It's not going to affect anything else. So I think that's really important to know. Everyone loves that feature. You don't have to constantly recreate a new budget. Yeah. And I love also that it does all the math for you, Vanessa, like, obviously, it's adding everything together and all that.

12:09But what we want you to we want you to get to zero on permanent. Oops, I spent all my money when I got to zero, or but you don't have to do the math, it does it for you. It's showing you like right now we've we're under over 50. So now we're gonna have to go change something. And so it just does that for you, which is really important when you build your budget, our budget matches your life, income minus debts, minus bills, minus spending, once you get to that spending stuff, you're looking and saying, Okay, after all my bills and debts are paid, this is how much I have left to work with really important information to have in your brain.

12:36And then you plan your spending and then you do your savings and you really can see what your income, what your monthly budget is capable of doing in a month. As you're filling this out, every category is deducting from your income. It calculates your income at the top. And then it says, okay, this is what you've budgeted so far. So what Shana is saying is as you're filling everything in, it's auto deducting from the top. And then it's telling you what your total remaining is as well. So you can just watch that. And again, we don't have big red bold letters or numbers to tell you that you're in the negative.

13:04It's just one little negative sign. It's very peaceful, but it's very easy for you to see, hey, you need to make some adjustments. So I think that's also important. Yeah. And if you look at the bottom too, Vanessa, we have everything is totaled. So I think that's always really interesting. Obviously, we always think it's really interesting that people can see their total how much they're paying on debt every month to see if I didn't have this is what I what could I do with this money instead. But I also think knowing like I'm paying one, one third, one third, one, almost a half of my income on bills.

13:31Then I can start to see, oh, this is the problem. Like I see that with my clients a lot. When we look at their bills, most of your money is gone. That's why it feels so tight. Or in other cases, like you're spending more than you are. You're doing more spending than you are paying for bills. That's fun for you. Like good job for you. I just had a session with a new person and she's paying$4 ,000 a month on minimum debt payments. And no wonder she felt strapped. And so we made this whole plan for the new year of how she was going to do things differently and just how she was going to adjust her budget.

13:59But it's really good to be able to see those totals at the bottom. So you can say, oh, now it makes sense. Yeah. And I like that it does the math for you because you, especially like we said, you're going to do your income, then your debts and your bills on here, and then you'll do your spending and you can play with it and say, okay, so if I want to be able to still have$1 ,500 left to save every month or 500 or 200, then I need to play with maybe a little less spending money or I can add a little spending money or whatever. And you can actually, you can see what a realistic budget will look like because you can do that.

14:26It does the math for you in the real time. Another thing that it has are check boxes. So we added the check boxes and we also added a wonderful new feature that dims. So as you check it off, it dims it out and it semi erases it and just makes it a little cleaner for you. So you can visually not just knowing that it's checked off, visually see that, Hey, that one is already paid for. If you want to go in here and look at your bills. And you can also check off your transfers for spending and your transfers for savings. Again, some people love this. Some people don't use it. Doesn't matter. But we have so many options and features in here for all the users.

14:58I think that that's what's really important. Yeah, I think so too. And here's something that's really important, I think too, that you don't have, we saw a lot of budgets. One of the reasons this doesn't feel cluttered is there's not an actual column. You don't have to go in and fill out actual. If your stupid Apple Music bill went up, which they always do, then you just go adjust it. And then when you pay it, you click it off and then you're all done. Yeah. I'm going to hit on that for a minute. What is the benefit of making a budget and then going in and putting actuals after the fact, right?

15:27So it happens. Okay, great. So like you said, just change the number. So the next month you're more prepared, right? So if you think you want to spend a thousand dollars on groceries, but really needed $1 ,200, you didn't want, you didn't make a realistic budget to begin with. Right. And we have to make adjustments. Then you're like, okay, but you know what? Next month I'm budgeting for 1200 because if that's what you needed that month then let's budget appropriately so that way you don't feel strapped yeah i think that most of the time the things that people change are the gas groceries and those things that are variable now what you're going to do instead of having to do that is you're going to have a category and a overall budget amount for each category and then you just have to you have to stick in that and you have to like vanessa said you do have to get it to the right number for your family but you don't have to go back and update anything you don't have to turn in receipts.

16:11You don't have to track what you spend on groceries. You just know, Hey, I put$1 ,200 in my grocery account every month and that's how much I spend and I'm done. Like all done. Yeah. I do want to say too, if this is the first time you're making a budget. So if you're, this is your brand new to the budgeting journey and you've never done this before, you've never tried it or you've tried it and you failed before you need to give yourself some grace. So if you're trying to figure out what number to put in for gas and groceries or spending money or your family fun account for movie night or things like that, you're not going to get it right month one or maybe even month two.

16:41So allow your budget to give you some buffer. So we always put a buffer line item in your, in here. I was going to say, that's a great point. So that way you can say, okay, I'm probably going to mess this up. Give me like a$500 buffer or a hundred dollars. It doesn't matter. Like some type of buffer this month. And so that way I know I have some wiggle room there because you're going to need it until you figure out what the right number is in each category that matches your life. Yeah. And so if we had people that went over here on these things, we would be updating it real time in the budget and showing them this is why you didn't have enough money because you're under because you spent more, you did more.

17:16And again, it just takes a couple months to get used to it. And then you get very good at sticking to the amounts because you actually have a realistic amount. Now, there are some other like this, the best budget template doesn't just have a budget on there because you want, like we said, you want one workbook to rule it all, like to have everything that you need when it comes to budgeting, financial, all of that kind of stuff. You want your budget to have all of it, Vanessa. So many different things that you're going in and finding and tracking it. Ours has lots of cool things. Yeah, it does.

17:42So we have probably over 20 tabs in here, but don't let that overwhelm you. It's again, a lot of, some people use all of them. Some people only use a certain amount and that we have options in here for you and we want you to be able to use them as you see fit. Yeah. And we, so I use a specific planner that some people might also find overwhelming and he says, don't worry about anything, start on the daily pages. And instead of going to the weekly or quarterly plan or whatever, the same thing is here. You don't have to do anything but that monthly budget, you start there. And then as you get, get familiar and get excited about budgeting, which you will when you use the system, then you can go out and use all the different features.

18:16So we have our goals listed, we also do an asset tracker and a debt tracker, because we want you to be able to see exactly what you have in the bank, what you have as far as debts and clear one page, again, one shot to be able to see it all in one view. Yeah. And once you fill out that debt tab, it auto populates. There's three more tabs in there that auto populates. And it just shows you three different methods to pay off debt, which is the debt snowball, the debt avalanche, and the debt minimum. And it allows you to say, okay, if you chose one of these methods, this is when you'll be debt-free.

18:44This is how much interest you would pay. This is the one you'd pay off first, last, all that. So it puts everything for you in this nice little chart and a list. So you can make a plan for your family. Cause sometimes the debt snowball isn't always the best plan. Shanna, sometimes you need to mix it up. Yeah. So we have all of those in there for you. We also have a savings bucket planner. This is when we told you, you need to have a budget that allows for all the irregular, unexpected expenses. That is what the savings column in our budget is for. It's not just this random generic, I'm saving money.

19:13It's no, I have gone and used my savings bucket planner and I am seeing how much my annual bills are each year and how much I spend on my house projects or whatever. And then I put that in my budget, my monthly budget, so that I have all of those things covered and they're not going to come up and surprise me. And so we help you do that in the savings bucket planner. Yeah. We also have a Christmas planner because that's also a savings bucket, but it gets its own tab because it's that big of a deal. Yeah. And also because we wanted to think about this is a big deal, but also we just, it's fun. We already had, we were using it.

19:42So we thought, why not put it in here for you guys? And it's really helpful. So then you have all of your monthly budgets, but then you have the paycheck plan. This is a big deal, Vanessa. Yeah. The paycheck plan is what's going to allow you to take your monthly budget and break it down per paycheck, right? So you have the option to decide on the new one, guys. We made some updates on this one. So on the new one, you get to decide, okay, how often do I want my spending transfers to happen? And how often do I want my savings transfers to happen? And once you fill out your budget, it auto-populates to the paycheck plan.

20:09And all you have to do is pick the month and the number of transfers you want. And it shows you exactly how much to spend per paycheck in those categories, knowing that your bills are also being taken care of. If you just follow the paycheck plan, that's all you do is follow the paycheck plan. you don't have to worry about anything else and then everything else in your budget will happen yeah the paycheck plan is where it tells you how to set what transfers to set up or if you're in the beginning and doing them manually or if you want to set them automatic it tells you exactly what to do and it's super great that way we actually have people who say i don't even look at the monthly once i make the budget i don't even look at it at all all i do is look at the paycheck plan and then we just have a we have so many just awesome features in here for everybody vanessa we have a debt-free budget which you can use just at a glance to see what your life is going to look like when you're when you paid everything on a mock budget that doesn't have anything auto filled so that you can see if some big something big is going to change or maybe you want to see what your budget will look like five years from now or whatever you can just use this to play around it'll still do the math for you right but you can dream again yeah so maybe you're retiring maybe you're having a baby maybe you're doing a job change like all that you can we use this a lot with our clients you can go in there and plug it in and you can just again plan for yourself yeah we also have a financial stop snapshot that kind of tells you your net worth and everything how you're spending your money all that kind of stuff again not something you have to use, but something that you can, it's gives you information.

21:22And if you're a nerd, you'll really love it. Yes, you do. We also have a retirement budget. It allows you to plan ahead. So if you're maybe in your forties and your fifties, and you're trying to think of what does retirement look like for me, you can plug it in here. We have directions. And again, this whole thing comes with walkthrough videos as well, but you can plug it in. You can even look at how much do I need to be saving and investing to be able to make my retirement budget work? Yeah. Because so the retirement budget, that the retirement calculator pulls from the budget. You can add in what you already have saved, what you're going to need each year, and then it'll tell you what you need to get to as far as having and saving so that you can feel like you can live the retirement life that you're planning.