Biweekly budget spreadsheet

If you are paid every two weeks, a monthly budget never quite lines up with your bank account. Rent is due on the 1st, the car payment on the 15th, and some months have three paychecks. Budgeting one paycheck at a time fixes that.

The Paycheck Budget Planner asks how often you are paid and when, then lines up your next 26 paydays. List your bills with their due days and it puts each one on the paycheck that lands on or before its due date. For every paycheck you see the income, the bills it has to cover, planned spending for groceries, gas and savings, and what is left over. A dashboard picks your current paycheck automatically and shows each bill as paid, due or overdue.

It works in Excel and Google Sheets and comes with a filled-in example. It is an organizing tool, not financial advice.

What you get

You get two files, a blank template and a filled-in example, plus a Start Here guide. Open them in Microsoft Excel, or upload them to Google Drive and open them with Google Sheets (free). You type in the input cells; the formulas, totals and charts update themselves.

Tips

• Enter your next payday and pay frequency first; everything else follows from it.
• Use the left-over chart to spot tight paychecks weeks ahead.
• In a three-paycheck month, give the extra check a job before it arrives.