7 Free Spreadsheets to Help You Budget and Save for Buying a House
In a recent thread, Tiller Community members shared their financial goals for the year ahead. Saving up to buy a home was at the top of the list for many people.
For most people, buying a house is one of the biggest and most impactful decisions of their financial lives.
That’s especially true now, with housing prices increasing rapidly across the United States. Planning a home purchase requires more thought and consideration than ever.
So here are several free spreadsheets to help you see what you can afford, save up for a downpayment, and budget for the ongoing expenses (and tax benefits) of homeownership.
What should be in your budget for buying a house?
Budgeting to buy a house involves several stages.
First, there’s learning what you can afford. Four common factors include:
- Housing cost to income ratio
- Total debt to income ratio (DTI)
- Available funds for down payment and closing costs
- Housing expenses (property tax, insurance, pmi, hoa, etc)
Then, there’s tracking and optimizing your savings for a down payment, closing fees, and moving.
Finally, when you own a home, your expenses will change – very often for the better!
If you want to make your own budget for planning a home purchase, here are some helpful tips to start with from Investopedia. This article provides standard rule-of-thumb numbers for how much you should budget for your down payment, closing costs, etc.
This also discusses managing your debt-to-income ratio to help you get qualified for a better mortgage.
Freddie Make Budget Worksheet Calculator
This is a useful and trusted web-based calculator for getting started with thinking about your home buying finances.
Once you input your data points, you can download the worksheet as an Excel file. This can then be opened in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel for further manipulation and analysis.
Here’s a similar tool for Canada.
Buying a House Budget Spreadsheet
Here’s a simple but effective spreadsheet from Reddit to help you experiment with different home purchase price scenarios for buying a home.
It also helps you make a quick personal budget that includes house maintenance, taxes, and the mortgage itself.
House Buying Model vs Renting Spreadsheet
The creator of this spreadsheet on Reddit used it to decide if they should rent or buy – in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the US. It’s simple but very detailed. The spreadsheet can help you answer:
- Should I buy vs rent?
- What is the potential tax-savings of being a homeowner?
- What are the other considerations to be made during the process?
And here’s another example of a Buy A House Or Rent spreadsheet.
Tiller Foundation Budget + Savings Budget
Tiller’s Foundation Template for Google Sheets includes a yearly and monthly budget. These can easily be modified to track multiple savings goals.
Because it’s powered by Tiller Money Feeds, it’s the only template on this list that automatically keeps your budgets and savings goals updated with your actual spending and account balances.
For even more control of tracking savings goals, add the free Savings and Debt sheet to your Foundation Template from Tiller Community Solutions.
Cost of Buying a House Worksheet
Use this worksheet from Allstate to keep track of and estimate the extra fees that go along with buying a house. This is a PDF, not a spreadsheet, unfortunately, but it would be easy to port over to Excel or Google Sheets.
Cost of Owning a House Worksheet
Owning a home is an ongoing expense. Boilers boil over and shingles blow away. Here’s an older spreadsheet to help you model various big and small home maintenance expenses.
Get the Google Sheets Template
Home Affordability Calculator
This spreadsheet helps you evaluate what you can afford to spend on a house, based on the four common factors above into consideration (housing expense to income ratio, debt to income ratio, available funds, housing expenses).
Get the template for Microsoft Excel 2007 and later
Also see the Home Expense Calculator from Vertex42.
Edward Shepard
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I’ve owned a few homes, but we’re currently renting, and buying a house is also my 2022 goal. Where I live in Burlington, Vermont, the housing market is going wild – very little inventory and month-over-month price spikes.
I am very glad people are moving to Vermont. I feel bad for the people who want to sell their homes here and remain here - but there’s simply nothing for them to buy. So they either have to move out of state, pay a ton for a new place, or stay put.
This is probably the worst financial timing I’ve had (so far).
Still, I know it will work out with planning, a little luck, and of course money.
It’s likely we will end up moving out of town, and buying a bigger house than we originally intended. Kind of a weird side effect of this market!
How’s it going where you are?
I’ve never owned a home, always rented with roommates, but I’m finally in a position to consider either buying a home or renting on my own.
I would highly recommend this short video to understand how to compare the costs of renting vs ownership Rent or Own Your Home? A Handy 5% Rule - PWL Capital
And this book recommended by the host of that video: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28673347-the-wealthy-renter