Microsoft Excel, with its powerful spreadsheet capabilities, remains an invaluable tool for managing finances, investments, loans, EMIs, budgets, and money matters. While you can create an investment planner or monthly household budget plan from scratch, it’s time-consuming and not very efficient. In this post, we have hand-picked a collection of free budget and finance templates for Excel, designed to simplify your finances and money management.

Find and use finance templates in Microsoft Excel

Before we start, let us show you how to find and use these templates in your Excel account. These templates are free and available from the Excel library, and it only takes a few seconds to find and import them. You don’t need to use any third-party websites or online stores for your Excel templates. Follow the steps below.

1. Open Microsoft Excel on the desktop.
2. Select New from the sidebar.
3. Click the search bar at the top and search for a template using the exact header as we mention it in the list below.
4. Glance over the template preview and details, then select Create.

Excel opens the template in the spreadsheet. You can now start editing it.

10 Personal monthly budget

Personal monthly budget template is ideal for any type of individual. Whether you are a freelancer, student, or professional, you can download this template to track your monthly budget like a pro. You can note down projected monthly income, actual income, projected balance, and expenses in different categories like Housing, Entertainment, Transportation, Taxes, Food, Gifts, and more.

There is also a ready-to-use table for savings and investments in different categories, like retirement and investment accounts. In the end, you can glance over your projected and actual costs and check out the differences.

9 Home construction budget

Whether you are remodeling a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, or entire home, use the home construction budget template to plan everything in advance. The Excel template is divided into two parts. The first sheet is a budget summary where you can check project information like project description, contractor, contact name, website, phone, and other details, as well as financial status, including amount of cash allocated, funds spent, and remaining cash.

In another spreadsheet, you can list all items, categories, and costs. Excel displays the live cost overview at the top as you go.

8 Investment tracker

As the name suggests, an investment tracker is your go-to solution for tracking your investments and asset allocation. It’s a must-have template for financial wizards. Right off the bat, you can add your investments, ticker symbols, company names, fund names, and more into the rows. Now, select the asset category and enter the number of shares in your portfolio.

The Excel stocks data type will keep your portfolio up to date with current prices and details of your assets. With another sheet, you can check your asset allocation across commodities, real estate, cash, bonds, international stocks, and US stocks.

7 Wedding expense budget

As the name suggests, this one is ideal for anyone planning a big event such as a wedding, birthday party, engagement, or housewarming party. This specific template is aimed at planning expenses and budgets for weddings, but you can always tweak it based on the occasion.

As for details, you can add dates, start a 'days remaining' count-down, enter categories, estimate costs, track actual costs, and monitor the differences. Spending data is available in a neat graph view at the bottom. There is another sheet to view your expenses within all the relevant categories, like Apparel, Reception, Entertainment, Photography, Decorations, Flowers, Gifts, Travel, and more. Overall, you will have complete control over your event expenses and can plan the entire function without breaking a sweat.

6 Small business sales invoice

This Microsoft Excel template is ideal for creating invoices on the go. Whether you are an entrepreneur, business manager, professional, or run a startup, use this sales invoice template to draft bills. As for details, you can add relevant information such as phone number, email, due date, item description, unit price, amount, and more. And most importantly, you can clearly track the payment status.

5 Monthly college expenses

As the name suggests, this one is ideal for students on a tight budget. Our college days are some of the most challenging in terms of managing finances and this Excel template lets you manage every dollar like a pro. It also fosters financial responsibility from a young age.

You can add your monthly income and expenses in different categories. They can be grouped into expenses semester by semester, so that you can track everything and see trends. There isn’t any option here to create specific entries for expenses, though. You can always create a new spreadsheet (or merge another template) for more detailed entries if you wish.

4 Retirement planner

If you are in your 30s or 40s and thinking about a retirement plan, use this Excel template to estimate your savings balance at the age of 60 or 65. You need to add your current age, annual income, inflation, retirement savings balance, annual savings amount, annual savings increase, and estimated return on investments.

Based on your data input, you can view the entire chart at the bottom with your desired retirement income, pension income, year-end balance, and more. There is also a neat Excel-generated graph at the top to track your savings.

3 Household monthly budget

Do you want to keep track of your household budget? Look no further than this Excel template. The template is divided into four parts, where you can check the budget overview, budget summary, monthly expenses, and additional data.

First enter your income, check the expense breakdown, and calculate your monthly expenses within categories like movies, sporting events, charity, gifts, and paying off debt. All the spreadsheets are neatly designed with different color schemes and can be an ideal companion to track monthly home expenses.

2 Credit card log

This one is quite straightforward. You can log credit card charges, transaction fees, and payments to your credit card account with the credit card log template. It automatically calculates the running balance and helps you track and monitor your finances more closely. It can be an ideal template when you have multiple credit cards and want to track everything in a single place.

1 Mortgage loan calculator

Do you have a home loan with a 20-year tenure? You can simply enter the purchase price, interest rate, duration of the loan, loan amount, start date, and check key statistics. There is also an amortization table to check your payment history, closing balance, and remaining number of months. If you want to apply extra to the principal, you'll see the beneficial impact you can make by doing so.

Transform your finances

What are you waiting for? Whether you are a college student looking to track expenses, an event planner, a family aiming to save for a dream vacation, or a freelancer seeking to manage invoices, the above-mentioned templates offer practical solutions and help you achieve your financial goals.

Microsoft Excel goes far beyond creating budgets and managing finances. You can always get creative with this versatile tool and complete some cool projects like Sudoku puzzles, event timelines, family tree with photos, and even a baby growth chart. Check out our separate guide to learn more about such unique projects you can do with Excel.