Household finances with AI: a budget by household size, goals and savings, and your documents in one sheet

Note: general recommendations only, not professional advice, not pension advice and not investment advice. You are responsible for checking before use. For tax, payslip and tax-back questions, consult a certified accountant or tax adviser, and for pension questions a licensed pension adviser. The full text is at the end.

Who this is for

Families, couples and people living alone who want to know what the household costs each month, what's left, and how to reach a goal: an emergency cushion, a vacation, a family event or a car. If your payslips pile up in a drawer, your bills arrive by email and get forgotten, and the annual pension report only gets opened to check that it came, this playbook is for you.

You don't need advanced spreadsheet skills. You copy ready formulas into a Google sheet and use a general AI tool you already have. If you don't want to upload documents to any AI tool, you can work without one: every formula works just as well when you type the amounts in by hand.

What this playbook doesn't do: it doesn't tell you which pension track to choose, doesn't recommend any savings or investment product, and doesn't check whether your payslip is legally correct. It helps you read the documents, organize the numbers, and get to a conversation with a professional with precise questions.

What you'll have at the end of the hour

• A "Profile" tab: how many adults and children live at home, their ages, the number of people today and the number of people after an expected change.
• A "Documents" tab: one row per payslip, bill, bank statement and pension report, with an amount, details and what to check. No account numbers and no ID numbers.
• An "Income and expenses" tab: all of the household's income and expenses, each with a category from a closed list.
• A "Budget by household size" tab: for each category, whether it depends on the number of people, a cost per person, and a budget that updates when something changes at home.
• A "Goals" tab: for each goal, an amount, a date, how much is already saved and how much to set aside every month.
• A "Monthly budget" tab: budget against actual for each category, a gap that turns red when you overspend, and a monthly balance.
• Four prompts: documents into one table, a comparison with last month, documents into income and expense rows, and a monthly summary for the family.

What you need

• A Google account (for Sheets).
• Payslips for the last two or three months, for everyone at home who works.
• The latest bills: electricity, water, municipal tax (arnona), gas, phone and internet, building committee.
• Credit card statements and the bank statement for the same months, or an export of them to Excel.
• The latest pension report (quarterly or annual) for each partner, and if you have one, the keren hishtalmut (study savings) report too.
• A general AI tool that lets you upload a file or an image: ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Optional.

One rule you don't bend: the AI doesn't invent numbers. It reads, organizes and writes. Every number in the sheet comes from a document of yours or from what you typed, and anything that isn't in the document comes out as [to check]. A visible gap in the table is better than a number that looks right and doesn't exist.

The kit, step by step (60 minutes)

Step 1 (5 minutes): The household profile

What to do: Open a new sheet called "Home [year]" with six tabs: Profile, Documents, Income and expenses, Budget by household size, Goals, Monthly budget. The names must be exactly these, because the formulas later refer to them by name.

How: First choose File > Settings > Locale and pick your country, so dates you type by hand are read the way you write them. Prompt 3 returns dates as 2026-09-01 (year-month-day), which Sheets reads correctly in any locale. Then fill in the "Profile" tab like this:

Field	Value
Adults	2
Children	3
People today	=B2+B3
People after a change	=B4
Children's ages	15, 11, 6

• B4 is the number of people today. The formula adds adults and children.
• B5 is the number of people after a change you expect: a baby on the way, a parent moving in, a child leaving for the army or moving out. As long as there's no change, it equals B4. When there is one, type a number in it.
• B6 holds the ages. They don't go into a formula, but they help you in Step 5: spending on a 15-year-old is different from spending on a 6-year-old.

On the same tab, write "Categories" in D1, and the household's categories from D2 down, one per row (click D2 and paste). A starting point:

Salary
Other income
Housing
Bills
Food and groceries
Education and activities
Transport
Health
Clothing
Insurance
Leisure and subscriptions
Other

Common mistake: too many categories. 10 to 15 are enough for a household. If you want every merchant broken out, that belongs to a different stage, and it has its own playbook (in Step 3).

Step 2 (10 minutes): Hide account and ID numbers before you upload

What to do: Before any document reaches an AI tool, remove what identifies you. The AI needs amounts, not your identity.

How:

1. On the payslip and the pension report: cover or crop the top of the document, where your name, ID number, employee number, address, the bank account your salary goes to and your pension account number appear. The simple way: a screenshot of the part with the amounts only. If you black things out in a PDF, take a screenshot after blacking out. A black box drawn over text in a PDF sometimes leaves the text underneath, and an AI tool reads it.
2. In a bank or credit card statement you export to a sheet: delete the columns for account number, branch, card number and balance. Transaction descriptions sometimes contain long numbers (a reference, a customer number). In an empty column next to the description, write the formula, drag it to the end, and paste the result over the original (Paste special > Values only):

=REGEXREPLACE(B2, "\d{5,}", "XXXX")

The formula catches an ID number (9 digits), an account number and a card number. It doesn't catch a number with spaces or hyphens in the middle, so take one more look.

3. Never upload a photo of an ID card, its appendix, a cheque or a credit card, not even "just to read an amount".
4. Before the first upload: in the AI tool's settings, check whether your chats are used to train the model, and turn that off if you can.

No AI at all: skip the prompts in Step 3 and type the amounts from the documents straight into the "Documents" tab, in the same columns. Every formula in Steps 4 to 7 works exactly the same. It takes about ten minutes more, and the documents never leave home.

Step 3 (15 minutes): Documents into one sheet with AI

What to do: Upload the clean documents from Step 2 to the AI tool, several at once, and get one table to paste into the "Documents" tab.

How: In the "Documents" tab, in A1, paste the headers:

Document type	Month or period	Amount	Details	To check

Then run the prompt:

You're helping summarize a household's documents into one table. I've attached [number] documents: [for example: two payslips, an electricity bill, a water bill, a pension report].

Return one row per document (each payslip gets its own row). The columns: document type | month or period | amount | details | to check.

What to extract from each type:
Payslip: in the amount column, the net pay. In details: gross pay, income tax, national insurance and health tax, employee pension contribution, employee keren hishtalmut (study savings) contribution, other deductions by name.
Bill (electricity, water, municipal tax, gas, phone and internet, building committee): in the amount column, the amount due. In details: the period, the due date, and the change from the previous bill if it appears in the document.
Bank or credit card statement: briefly only. Total charges in the period, total credits, and salaries, standing orders and loans that appear by name. Don't list every transaction.
Pension or study savings report: in the amount column, the balance. In details: contributions in the period (employee, employer, severance, if they're separated), the management fee on contributions and the management fee on the balance, as written.

Binding rules:
1. Don't invent numbers and don't calculate a number that isn't written. Anything not in the document: [to check].
2. Don't copy a name, ID number, employee number, account number or policy number, even if they appear.
3. Don't judge whether a management fee, tax or contribution is high, low or correct, and don't recommend a track, a provider or a product.
4. In the "to check" column, write only what's unclear in the document or [to check], in one short sentence. Otherwise leave it empty.

Return one code block, with a tab between columns, with no header row. Numbers with no currency sign and no thousands separators.
Below the block: how many documents you received and how many rows you returned.

How to bring it back: Click A2 and paste. If everything lands in one column, use Data > Split text to columns. Go over each row against the document: the net pay, the amount due and the balance are the numbers that matter most.

Bank statements and credit cards: want to break the bank statement into every transaction and find subscriptions you forgot? That's exactly what the playbook Where the money goes does. Here, a monthly amount per category is enough.

When you have a payslip or a bill from the previous month, you can ask for a comparison in the same chat:

Here are two rows of the same document type, from different months: [paste from the "Documents" tab].
For every field in the details that changed, write: field | before | after | difference.
Don't explain why it changed and don't decide whether the change is correct. Instead, for every change above 5%, write one short question we can ask payroll, the provider or our accountant.

Pension and tax, briefly: in the pension report you read three things: the balance, the contributions in the period, and the management fees taken from contributions and from the balance. That's what goes into the sheet. Whether the track suits you, whether the fees are reasonable, and whether to move to another provider are questions for a licensed pension adviser. The same goes for the payslip: the sheet shows what was deducted. Whether a deduction is correct, and whether you're owed tax back, are questions for a certified accountant or a tax adviser.

Step 4 (8 minutes): The Income and expenses tab

What to do: All the money that comes in and goes out in a month goes into one tab, one row per amount, with a category. Everything else is calculated from here.

How:

1. In the "Income and expenses" tab, in A1, paste the headers:

Date	Description	Amount	Category	Type	Source	Note

Column A is the date, B the description, C the amount, D the category, E the type (only Income or Expense), F the source (payslip, bill, credit card, bank, manual), G a note. Amounts are always positive, expenses too: the type is already in column E.

2. Select column D and choose Data > Data validation > Dropdown (from a range), with the range Profile!D2:D. Select column E and choose a dropdown with two options: Income, Expense.
3. Fill it in. From payslips, the net pay goes in as income. From bills, the amount due goes in as an expense. From credit cards and the bank, one row per category per month goes in, not one per transaction. The easiest way to get the totals by category is the pivot table in the playbook Where the money goes.
4. To turn the "Documents" tab into ready rows, run:

Here is my "Documents" tab (document type | month or period | amount | details | to check): [paste]
And here is my category list: [paste column D from the "Profile" tab]

For each document return a row: date | description | amount | category | type | source | note.
Date: the first day of the month the document belongs to, in the format YYYY-MM-DD (for example 2026-09-01).
Category: only from the list, exactly as written. If no category clearly fits, write [to check].
Type: Income for a payslip (the net pay), Expense for a bill. A pension report doesn't go in at all: it's savings already deducted from the payslip, not an expense of the month.
A bank or credit card statement doesn't go in either: its spending is entered separately, per category, from the "Where the money goes" playbook.
A bill covering two months: two rows, half the amount in each month, with the note "two-month bill".
Don't change amounts. Return a code block with a tab between columns, with no header row.

Common mistake: counting credit cards twice. The bank statement shows one monthly charge per card, and the card statement shows every purchase in that charge. Enter only the card statement, and delete the card's charge row from the bank. The same goes for transfers between the partners' accounts and for savings moved to another account: they aren't expenses.

Step 5 (7 minutes): A budget by household size

What to do: Build a budget from what the household actually spends, and decide for each category whether it grows with the number of people. Food does. Rent usually doesn't.

How:

1. In the "Budget by household size" tab, in A1, paste the headers. In G1 write "Months of data", and in H1 the number of months you entered in Step 4 (for example 3). D2 adds up every expense row ever entered and divides by H1, so each time you add a month of data, raise H1 by one (it's in the monthly routine).

Category	Depends on people	Cost per person	Monthly spending	Budget after a change

2. In column A, write the expense categories from the "Profile" tab (without Salary and Other income). In column B, write per person or fixed for each category. You decide, based on your household.
3. Paste the formulas into row 2, each in its column, and drag down:

C2: =IF(B2="per person", D2/Profile!$B$4, "")
D2: =IFERROR(SUMIFS('Income and expenses'!$C:$C,'Income and expenses'!$D:$D,$A2,'Income and expenses'!$E:$E,"Expense")/$H$1,"")
E2: =IF(B2="per person", C2*Profile!$B$5, D2)

Why this way: D is your actual average monthly spending. C divides it by the number of people today. E multiplies the cost per person by the number of people after the change. As long as B5 equals B4, the budget equals today's spending. When you change B5 on the "Profile" tab, every category marked "per person" updates on its own.

Not every person costs the same. A baby, a teenager and an adult don't eat or dress for the same amount, and in education and activities the difference is bigger still. For categories like these, mark fixed, and write in E an amount you worked out yourself from the ages on the "Profile" tab. The formula is a starting point, not a forecast.

How do you know if the numbers are reasonable? This playbook gives no national averages, because a number that doesn't fit your household misleads more than it helps. If you want to compare, open the Household Expenditure Survey from Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), which publishes average spending by household size. Use it for a self-check only: if you're very far from the average in a category, it's worth checking whether you forgot an expense or counted something twice. Don't copy numbers from it into your budget.

Step 6 (5 minutes): Goals and savings

What to do: Write down what you want to save for, by when, and how much you already have. The sheet calculates how much to set aside every month.

How: In the "Goals" tab, in A1:

Goal	Target amount	Saved so far	Target date	Monthly amount needed	Note

Write the goals in rows 2 to 11 (up to ten goals). Paste the formula into E2 and drag down to E11:

=IFERROR(MAX(0,B2-C2)/MAX(1,DATEDIF(TODAY(),D2,"M")),"")

The formula takes what's missing and divides it by the number of full months left until the target date. If less than a month is left, it divides by one. If the target date has already passed, the cell stays empty, and that's a sign to update the goal.

In E12, below the goals, write the total =SUM(E2:E11). Keep row 12 for the total only, and if you need more than ten goals, insert rows between row 2 and row 11 (not directly above the total row), drag the E formula into them, and check that the range in the total grew with them. That's how much all the goals together need each month. In Step 7 you'll compare it with the monthly balance.

Why no interest and no returns: the calculation assumes the money simply adds up. That way the sheet makes no promise about any investment, and the number is conservative: if the money earns something along the way, you'll get there a little early. Where to keep the money in the meantime is a question for a licensed adviser, not for the sheet.

Common mistake: too many goals at once. If the total in E12 is higher than the monthly balance, you have to choose: move a date, lower an amount, or drop a goal. That's the family's decision, and the sheet only shows it.

Step 7 (10 minutes): The monthly budget sheet

What to do: Build the tab you open every month: budget against actual for each category, the monthly balance, and what's left after the goals.

How:

1. In the "Monthly budget" tab, write "Month" in G1, and in H1 the first day of the month you're checking, as a date. The safe way is a formula: =DATE(2026,10,1) for October 2026.
2. Paste the headers into A1:

Category	Budget	Actual	Gap

3. Paste the formulas into row 2 and drag down, one row per category on the "Budget by household size" tab:

A2: ='Budget by household size'!A2
B2: =ROUND('Budget by household size'!E2,-1)
C2: =SUMIFS('Income and expenses'!$C:$C,'Income and expenses'!$D:$D,$A2,'Income and expenses'!$E:$E,"Expense",'Income and expenses'!$A:$A,">="&$H$1,'Income and expenses'!$A:$A,"<"&EDATE($H$1,1))
D2: =B2-C2

B rounds the budget to the nearest ten. If you decided on a different budget for a category, just type it in B instead of the formula. A positive gap in D means budget is left. A negative gap means you overspent.

4. A color for overspending: select D2:D30 and choose Format > Conditional formatting > Custom formula is, with this formula and a red fill:

=AND(ISNUMBER($D2),$D2<0)

5. The monthly balance: in columns G and H, below the month, paste:

H3 (Income this month):    =SUMIFS('Income and expenses'!$C:$C,'Income and expenses'!$E:$E,"Income",'Income and expenses'!$A:$A,">="&$H$1,'Income and expenses'!$A:$A,"<"&EDATE($H$1,1))
H4 (Expenses this month):  =SUMIFS('Income and expenses'!$C:$C,'Income and expenses'!$E:$E,"Expense",'Income and expenses'!$A:$A,">="&$H$1,'Income and expenses'!$A:$A,"<"&EDATE($H$1,1))
H5 (Monthly balance):      =H3-H4
H6 (Needed for goals):     =Goals!E12
H7 (After goals):          =H5-H6

In column G, write the names in parentheses. H4 adds up all of the month's expenses, including ones with no row in the budget, so if it's higher than the total of column C, there's an expense with no category in the budget. A negative H7 means the goals need more than what's left this month.

6. A monthly summary for the family: at the end of the month, copy the "Monthly budget" tab and the "Goals" tab, and run:

You're writing a short monthly summary for a family, from its own sheet.
The monthly budget tab (category | budget | actual | gap), and below it income, expenses, balance, needed for goals and after goals:
[paste]
The goals tab (goal | target amount | saved so far | target date | monthly amount needed):
[paste]
Our notes on the month (optional):
[for example: a reimbursement from the health plan, a birthday, a car repair]

Binding rules:
1. Every number in the summary is copied from the tables. Don't recalculate and don't round differently.
2. Only give a reason for overspending if it appears in our notes. Otherwise write "Reason: [to check]".
3. Don't recommend any financial product, loan, insurance, provider or investment track, and don't suggest where to keep the savings.
4. Plain language, no judgment. This is a document for the family, not a report for the bank.

The structure, half a page at most:
a. One line: what the monthly balance was, and whether it covers what the goals need.
b. Where we overspent: up to three categories with the largest negative gap, each with its reason or [to check].
c. How much is left this month (the balance), and where each goal stands.
d. What to check next month: up to three short questions we need to answer.

Common mistake: running the summary before all of the month's expenses are in. The credit card charge for a month usually arrives early the next month. Run it after the statement closes.

A monthly routine (15 minutes a month)

1. Upload the new payslips and bills, after blacking out, and run prompt 1. Without AI, type them into the "Documents" tab.
2. Run prompt 3 and paste the rows into the "Income and expenses" tab, together with the credit card and bank totals by category.
3. On the "Budget by household size" tab, update H1 to the number of full months now in "Income and expenses" (one more than last month).
4. On the "Monthly budget" tab, set H1 to the new month.
5. On the "Goals" tab, update "Saved so far".
6. Run prompt 4, fill in every [to check], and talk about it at home for five minutes.

Once a year, when the annual pension report arrives, add it to the "Documents" tab and check that the contributions in the report match the deductions on the payslips. If they don't, that's a question for the provider or the employer.

Full example: The Alon family (a fictional family)

Everything in this example is fictional: the family, the names, the documents and the amounts. The numbers are only for illustration, not an average and not a recommendation.

The profile: Michal and Ron, and three children aged 15, 11 and 6. B4 = 5. Michal's parent is expected to move in within six months, so to test that scenario they type 6 in B5.

The "Documents" tab after prompt 1 (shortened):

Notice the last row: the fee on contributions didn't appear on the page that was photographed, so the AI wrote [to check] and didn't guess. Ron found it on the second page of the report and filled it in by hand.

Checking Ron's payslip: 15,200 minus 1,218, 1,210, 912 and 380 equals 11,480. The net pay adds up.

The "Budget by household size" tab (H1 = 3 months, shortened):

Monthly spending across all categories is 18,750. Monthly income is 21,420 (both net salaries). When B5 changes to 6, the budget rises to 19,786: food, health and clothing grow, and the rest stays put.

The "Goals" tab (calculated on November 1, 2026):

Together: 3,634 a month.

The "Monthly budget" tab, October 2026 (shortened):

Income this month 21,420, expenses 19,240, monthly balance 2,180. Needed for goals 3,634, so "After goals" comes out at minus 1,454. Even a month exactly on budget would have left only 2,670.

What the monthly summary said (shortened): "The October balance was 2,180, which doesn't cover the 3,634 the goals need. We overspent on clothing (460, reason: holiday shopping) and on food and groceries (450, reason: [to check]). Left this month: 2,180. To check next month: do we move the target date of the emergency cushion? What pushed the grocery spending up? Did the electricity bill rise because of the air conditioner or because of the rate?"

Notice: no reason was invented for the grocery overspending, because there wasn't one in the notes. And the summary didn't suggest where to keep the money. It handed the decision back to the family.

Checklist

• The six tab names match the names in the formulas exactly
• Every uploaded document had the name, ID number, employee number and account numbers hidden
• No photo of an ID card, cheque or credit card was uploaded
• Using chats for training is off in the AI tool, if that option exists
• Every net pay in "Documents" was checked against the payslip, and every [to check] was filled in or kept as a question
• Credit cards weren't counted twice, and transfers between accounts weren't counted as expenses
• Every category in "Budget by household size" is marked "per person" or "fixed"
• H1 on the "Monthly budget" tab is set to the month you're checking
• Every goal has a future date and an up-to-date "Saved so far"
• Pension questions went to a licensed pension adviser, and tax questions to an accountant

Disclaimer

This content is general recommendations only, not professional, legal, accounting or tax advice, and not pension advice, investment advice or investment marketing. Every household is different. You are responsible for checking that it fits your situation, and for checking the data, prompts and formulas before you use them. The sheet is a tool for organizing and tracking at home, and doesn't replace your payslips, statements and official confirmations. Outside tools, prices and terms of service change, so check them at the source. Before deciding on savings, pension, insurance, a loan, a tax claim or reporting, consult a certified accountant or tax adviser, and for pension questions a licensed pension adviser.

The content, prompts, templates and code are provided as is, with no warranty that they fit a particular purpose or are free of errors. Gindi Innovation and Aviad Gindi are not liable for any damage, direct or indirect, arising from using them or relying on them, including output from AI tools. Use is subject to the site terms.

What's next

Want to break your spending down by merchant and find subscriptions you forgot? The playbook Where the money goes does exactly that, and its output goes straight into the "Income and expenses" tab. Running a budget for a business or a nonprofit too? Budget, actuals and goals in one sheet is built the same way.

Here you upload, paste and update by yourself once a month. The same sheet can be connected so payslips and bills that arrive by email are read on their own, the rows wait for your approval, and the monthly summary reaches you ready. The decisions stay yours.