Formally keeping track of a monthly budget over time helps to keep clear on your spending patterns and your financial history. At worst, it means having to write costs that are frustrating to think about and plan for, but at best, it's a way to see yourself being more organized and responsible. Having an aesthetically pleasing simple monthly budget to repeat gives peace of mind for having a solid record of your finances. One step is to just keep track of what your income is and how much you are spending and where. Here, a clear and proper budget breakdown is available for download. There are a few notes on the method used for this spreadsheet.

Download Here. EPS Budget Sheet.

Download Here. EPS Budget Sheet.

One strong rule of budgeting for each month is a rule of thirds. In this method, your housing is within one third of your monthly income, your expenses are kept to less than a third of your budget, and this way the last third is potential savings and investment income. 

For housing, likely the most essential part of a monthly personal budget, having it only cost a third of your income insures that, if times are harder, there is still enough of the budget available to devote to your place of living. This way, the most important thing is more likely to be taken care of. When applying to apartments, for example, they might want applicants to make three times the money of whatever the rent would be. In many cases, finding a residence where the cost is only a third of the average person's monthly income is difficult. The times of a person's income being able to match that rule in the current day housing market is becoming rarer.  Still, it is a good rule to aim for. This is considering all forms of housing: renting a room, renting an apartment, having a mortgage, etc. Also in this consideration are expenses that come with the housing. For example, mandatory renter's insurance, HOA fees, attached trash billings, etc. Often, an evaluation of whether or not to move out of a parental home might be if someone makes at least twice what their housing cost will be. There are exceptions, such as unusually high housing areas. For example, if your expenses are a very small fraction compared to how much you make, and you can afford to allocate more of your budget to housing. Within the housing budget, I include any separate storage fees, cost of PO boxes, if necessary, etc., as well as the expectation of potentially increasing costs such raised rent or increased property taxes on a yearly basis.

Bills are categorized here as any regular bills and cost such as electric (as well as water, sewer, and trash if not separated from the housing bill), internet, cell phone costs, car payments, and more. It's an area I would charge to things like subscription services or gasoline as well. In this budget sheet, bills are separated out from other expenses such as groceries and personal care items to split the budget into four sections instead of three. Their ratios can be very different.

It leads to the last third or fourth of a person's budget to being used for miscellaneous fees, whereas much of that is possible can be used for savings, retirement and more. Even here, further breaking miscellaneous into a fractional budget can help. For example, a third going to savings, a third going to safe investment, and a third going to retirement funds. There is a lot of variation that can be done especially here. There will also probably be changes continuously over time. For example, 100% of it could go to savings until there are 2-3 months of expenses saved in case of an emergency. Then, maybe 75% goes to debt such as student loans and credit cards and 25% to retirement. Maybe 50% goes into a separate savings for a new car, or a condo down payment.

Here are a few notes about the spreadsheet:

• Have the google sheet set to 75% zoom to best see all the details in a quick glance.
• The grid lines are off. They can be turned back on to better see the cells by going to View->Show-> and then selecting grid lines.
• The font is cormarant garamond font with a default size of 12pt.

Process

Overall Timeframe

• Decide whether or not to move.
• Do paperwork for both residences as needed. Moving in with roommates or even parents, make sure you have your agreements sorted out.
• Give notice to move in advance. If you have a landlord you communicate with regularly such as a house rental, letting them know far in advance can be helpful for them to plan accordingly. For example, if you know in six months, you will move, let them know informally via text or whenever you see them that you'll probably move (this is to be safe in case something comes up and you change your mind), and then formally two or three months before over email/text. Another way is to informally inform the landlord about 3 months prior that you will likely be moving out, then two months before, state whether or not you've for sure decided to move out and ask if there is any check out list.
• Asking to Leave Your Lease Early: usually, breaking a lease is a bad thing. You get charged greatly for it. You are expected to pay for the entirety of the lease. You may even encounter a fee, but if you know you can move into the new residence before the ending of the lease, you could always ask what works best for the landlord or management. For example, let's say your lease is up January 1st, 2025, but you can move into your new place as of November 15th, 2024.  If your current monthly payment is $1,000 a month, but given real estate increases, the demand for a place like yours is now $1500 a month, instead of getting $1000 for December, assuming there is a large move in market, it might be better for your landlord to let you end your lease early and set up a move in for someone else December 1st who will pay 500 more. This is assuming a good market for them where they could nearly grantee renting it out. I bring this up as we recently passed, as a fast-growing city, an enormous increase in the amount people were willing to pay for current residences. In my case, it nearly doubled and move in dates were being agreed to in 3 days rather than 3 months.

Major Strategy

Planning

• Identify how much time you have to move, how much time it takes to get from the first residence to the second (and back while considering avoiding bad traffic times), 
• Decide on the timeframes, deadlines, and priorities for the steps to moving.
• Timeframes such as, how much overlap you have overlap between when you can move into to the new place and when you need to be moved out of the old one,

• Once you plan on moving, start saving all delivery boxes. Save money by using left over Amazon, Hello Fresh, etc. boxes for packing. This way, you don't need to spend as much money on buying new moving boxes. Even if you think you can move with mostly some tote and trash bags, saving the boxes you'll already have is useful since they're protective, fitting for anything geometric, and stackable.
• Consider using tote bags, old boxes of supplies like for blenders, etc.
•  Packing things like toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. into a cosmetic bag then everything else can be boxed or bagged and labeled. In the two months, theoretically you can still pull out your uncommon items. Just fold the tops of the box in overlapping fours instead of taping.
• I've seen people who kept their appliance boxes. For example, blenders have weird enough shapes and sharp enough blades to hold themselves.
• Start deep cleaning asap in order to minimize last minute cleaning.
• Is your home address the same as your physical address and as your mailing address? These are not always the exact same. For example, if your condo complex occupies multiple streets.

A P A R T M E N T  S E A R C H  S P R E A D S H E E T

Apartment Shopping Comparison Guide

The Apartment Search Spreadsheet is a copy-able Google Sheet for managing apartment shopping all in one place.  Sections include what the user is looking for, their budget, and the details of each apartment being considered. Each apartment specific sheet has entries for the address, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, size in square footage, rent cost, mandatory fees like for pest control and renters' insurance, how long of a commute it would be, and checkable features such as if it has a walk-in closet or a patio exposed to sunlight for gardening. The user can add their own cells about school districts or public transport accessibility. The first page tracks when and where the apartment search is taking place. The second page is for entering goals, plans, necessities, and wants. The third page and onward are for each apartment under consideration. Go into 'print' mode to have each of the apartment choices pages next to each other for comparison of pros and cons.

Download Here

Apartment_Search_Spreadsheet

H O W  T O  U S E  T H E  S P R E A D S H E E T

 Download here.

 Curriculum Vitae

A CV, or curriculum vitae, is a bibliography of your own history in your profession. 

Here, the citations are captions of each project and references are to the different jobs you have done.

It acts as a portfolio but for professions such as writers, researchers, architects, and software developers instead of artists.

Each job or work done is listed as a one sentence summary.

For example, Stephen King would have a section on his CV for books he had written, another for books he contributed to, and another for feature films he had worked on in relationship to being an author.

A researcher would list each journal publication they appeared on and each mentorship role they've had.

Coders would list their software's, and architects would list their designs.

All of it acts as documentation for yourself on what work you have done, and it is to be updated with time: your education, professional focus, projects, published work, achievements and awards, rewarded grants and funding, invited talks and article interviews, professional memberships and services, teaching and outreach, and more.

It acts as a portfolio for numerous projects, published work, and achievements, or an accounting of work experiences, qualifications, and education.

They are the detailed follow-ups of resumes.

Download a copy of the template here.