Keeping track of when bills are due can be very simple with our free spreadsheet. It’s a simple concept that allows you to track when bills are due, the estimated monthly amount due and the total amount you have paid for the month. Using this simple spreadsheet may help you never miss a bill due date again.

Download the 2012 Budget Format Schedule Template now.

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Free Sample weekly Budget Plan in Excel Format

So what exactly does net worth mean? It’s basically the difference between your assets and liabilities and hopefully a positive number. In short add up what everything you have is worth, add in your savings and retirement and the subtract all your debts including home, auto, and credit cards. It’s very important to track your net worth when it comes to personal finance.

The average American’s net worth in 2007 was about $93,000, so where do you stand? Here is a quick excel worksheet that is free to download and will help you figure out your net worth and continue to track it in the future.

Free net worth calculator

A personal family budget is basically a financial plan of how you will allocate your income each month toward debt, savings, entertainment and other expenses. These allocations are usually tracked with pen and paper, some type of spreadsheet, or some kind of budgeting software.

The purpose of a budget is to keep you accountable for the money that you make each month and show you how you are spending your money. You should spend every penny of your income each month on paper or on the computer before you ever get the money. Knowing how you will spend your money in advance will help you make better decisions about your personal finances.

Budgets can be as simple as a one page layout with all your income and expenses listed and a space reserved to track your spendings. Budgets can however be very complex and detailed with graphs and charts representing different categories or detailed worksheets to fill out each day.

A popular budgeting technique adopted by many people currently is the envelope system. It’s the process of breaking down your budget into several categories all of which have their own special envelope. Each envelope contains a specified amount of cash for that time period. Once that envelope is empty you have no more money in that category for the month. Popular envelope categories include: entertainment, personal spending money, transportation, groceries and food, miscellaneous, etc.

Once you have mastered the art of budgeting your personal finances will be start to see a positive flow. Please feel free to use any of the free budget worksheets, or other financial tools you can find on our site to help you in your journey.

Free excel budget

Free Sample Weekly Budget Plan in Excel

Download our free sample excel budget now!

Think you know everything about money and finance, well that may be so but please take our quiz to find out. It’s fun and who knows you might learn something! Post your results and comments as well as anything you learned.

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Calculate your monthly payment on a new home or how much your payment will be on a refinance with our simple payment calculator. Even the smallest amount of interest rate can save you thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a 30 year loan. Don’t waste your money use our calculator as a quick reference guide to saving.

Private mortgage insurance (PMI) or Lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) is only issued with conventional loans. It is required when you purchase a home with less than a 20% down payment. It’s basically an insurance policy that is payable to the lender in the chance that the borrower defaults on the loan. The amount of PMI varies based on factors including the length of the loan term, frequency of the payments, loan to value amount (LTV amount).

There are ways to avoid PMI, the most obvious is to pay 20% on the loan. The second method is to do an 80/15/5 or an 80/10/10 or 80/20 loan, essentially paying the 20% with a partial down payment and a home equity loan, or HELOC. The final way is to pay the PMI up front, many times lenders will even let you finance this amount back into the loan this will also save you more money because this amount will be tax deductible unlike PMI payed monthly.

Here is a simple application that will let you calculate an estimated PMI charge.