Budgeting with Notion
Budgeting is an essential aspect of personal finance that requires planning, monitoring and discipline. Without proper budgeting, you risk overspending, incurring debt, and failing to achieve your financial goals.
Fortunately, software technology has made budgeting easier than ever and one tool that has gained popularity in recent years is Notion.
Notion is a productivity app that combines features of note-taking, project management and database software. It allows users to create custom templates and pages that suit their specific needs.
One pupular use case of Notion is budgeting and we have just published a new template as part of our simple personal finance tools collection.
Major benefits of our Budget Notion Template
This Notion template helps you keep track your personal budget:
- Organise your expenses by categories
- Visualise important insights in real time: difference between potential and actual costs
- Create new pages from the template every month to track your expenses by categories.
- Projected cost should be based on your past expense data.
- Actual cost is a sum of all your expenses in each category
- Make informed financial decisions.
Tracking Projected and Actual Costs
Projected and actual costs are both important elements of a budget because they provide different types of information that can help you manage your finances effectively.
Projected costs are estimates of how much you plan to spend on a particular item or category over a given period, usually a month or a year. They are based on your past spending patterns, current needs, and future expectations. Projected costs allow you to plan ahead and allocate your resources effectively. They also help you identify potential issues before they occur, so you can take corrective action if needed.
Actual costs, on the other hand, are the real costs you incur during a given period. They reflect the actual amount of money you spent on a particular item or category, regardless of whether it was more or less than what you had projected. Actual costs provide valuable feedback on how well you are managing your budget and can help you identify areas where you need to adjust your spending habits.
By comparing projected and actual costs, you can gain insights into your spending patterns and adjust your budget accordingly. For example, if your actual costs are consistently higher than your projected costs for a particular category, it may be an indication that you need to adjust your budget or look for ways to reduce your expenses in that area. On the other hand, if your actual costs are consistently lower than your projected costs, you may be able to reallocate those funds to other areas of your budget or use them to save for future expenses.
How to use this Notion template
To use this template you will need a Notion account, you can create one on Notion's website - https://www.notion.so/signup
After signing up, click the "Personal Budget Notion Template" link below to download it via Gumroad:
Then click the "Duplicate" button at the top right area of the page.
If you're already signed in, the template will be automatically added to your workspace. If you're logged out or don't have a Notion account, you'll be prompted to sign in or create one first!
Now that you have a copy of the template in your workspace it's entirely yours now and you can make edits as you want to the page.
FAQs
Is this free to use?
This tool is completely free to use. You get lifetime access and free updates to the template.
Do I get updates?
Yes. You get a lifetime access to the Notion template and subsequent updates made to the template.
How do I use this template continuously?
Once you have duplicated the template into your Notion workspace, the template is always available in every new page you create. You can create new Notion pages and select the "Personal Budget" template for the new pages then append the current month to the title so that you can distinguish it from the challenge of the previous month.
At Ratio App we build easy to use and intuitive personal finance tools that will help you become financially responsible. We are currently working on budgeting features in our mobile apps. You can join our early access program here or download the BETA build using the button below.
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