Weekly Budget for Windows

A wise person once said that using a budget doesn't keep you from having what you want, it helps you get what you want. Sticking to a budget can help you reach your financial goals, whether they include a vacation next summer or retirement 20 years from now. Weekly Budget is a set of simple Excel spreadsheets that can help you manage your money on a week-to-week basis. It's a surprisingly thorough budgeting solution, and we liked it a lot.

Weekly Budget provides two different worksheets: a weekly budget and a biweekly budget. Depending on how often you get paid and how many bills you have, one or the other of these might work better for you. Both spreadsheets have numerous categories for spending, covering home expenses, daily living, transportation, health, holidays, dues and subscriptions, financial obligations, personal, entertainment, recreation, and miscellaneous. There's also space for a variety of different income types, and room for user-defined spending categories as well. Our favorite thing about Weekly Budget was the fact that you can enter both your budgeted amounts for each category and the amounts you actually spend, and the spreadsheet will display the difference; categories that are over budget will display the difference in red, making it easy to identify and plug any leaks in your budget.

Overall, Weekly Budget is not the most sophisticated budgeting option we've used, but we think it's a great choice for people who need a straightforward way to manage their money.