The Expat Budget Planner — Because "It's Cheap There" Is Not a Financial Plan

You've done the research. You've watched the YouTube videos, read the blog posts, and spent an embarrassing amount of time on Numbeo at 11pm. You're pretty sure you can afford to move abroad. Pretty sure.

This spreadsheet turns "pretty sure" into actual numbers.

What Is This?

A fully built, formula-powered Excel spreadsheet designed for anyone planning a move abroad — whether that's Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Georgia, or anywhere else you've been quietly Googling.

It's not a template you have to build yourself. It's not a generic budget tracker with nothing filled in. It's a structured, three-tab system that takes you from "how much will this cost?" all the way through to "did I actually stick to my budget this month?"

If you can type a number into a yellow box, you're qualified to use it.

What's Inside

🗂️ 40+ expense categories across 11 sections of real expat life:

Housing · Food (eating in) · Food (eating out) · Healthcare · Transport · Personal Care · Household · Entertainment · Education · Savings · Miscellaneous

💱 EUR ↔ USD Auto-Conversion

Update one cell with today's exchange rate and every single number across all 40+ categories converts instantly. It's genuinely satisfying. The reverse rate calculates itself — you only ever touch one number.

📊 Dashboard Tab — Your Command Centre

This is where you set your currency, enter your exchange rate, and plug in the typical cost ranges for your destination. Type a LOW and HIGH for each expense category (Housing, Food, Transport, etc.) and those figures flow automatically to the My Budget tab. Research in one place, see it everywhere.

📋 My Budget Tab — The Detail View

Work through your 40+ line items and enter your personal monthly budget in the yellow column. The destination research you entered on the Dashboard sits right there as your reference. Converted currency and annual totals calculate themselves. You just make the decisions.

📅 Monthly Spending Tracker

Log what you actually spend once you're there. Compare it to your budget. Find out whether you're the kind of person who sticks to a plan or the kind of person who "just had to try every restaurant in the neighbourhood." No judgment — the spreadsheet just reports the facts.

Duplicate the tab for each new month and you've got a full running record of your financial life abroad.

Who Is This For?

• Anyone seriously planning a move abroad who wants real numbers to work with
• Remote workers and digital nomads figuring out how far their income actually stretches
• Retirees deciding where their pension goes furthest
• Anyone who has typed "cost of living [city]" into Google more than three times this week
• People who want the benefits of a well-built spreadsheet without having to build one

What You Get

✅ Expat Budget Planner.xlsx — works in Excel and Google Sheets

✅ Welcome Guide PDF with full step-by-step instructions

✅ EUR ↔ USD auto-conversion (update one cell, everything updates)

✅ Dashboard → My Budget research sync (type once, see it everywhere)

✅ Monthly Spending Tracker tab

✅ Instant download — yours to keep, update, and use for every destination

One Honest Note

The typical budget profiles in the Dashboard are ballpark figures to get you oriented — not promises. Costs vary wildly by city, neighbourhood, lifestyle, and season. The spreadsheet gives you the structure; your research fills in the real numbers. That's what the yellow cells are for.

Built with care (and an unreasonable number of spreadsheet formulas) by New Life Albania.

📺 Find us on YouTube · New Life Albania