Personal Finance
First Home Setup Budget
See exactly where your budget runs out across a prioritised setup list, so what you go without is a decision rather than a surprise.
- Delivery
- Instant download
- Purchase
- One-time payment
- Format
- Google Sheets
- Excel
- Updated
- August 2026
What this spreadsheet does
Furnishing a first place goes wrong by buying the visible things first. On the worked example a $2,500 budget covers the day one list and falls $1,920 short of everything.
What you can do with it
- Find what a fixed budget actually covers
- Decide what to defer rather than discovering it at the till
- Split a setup list between day one and later
What's included
Sheet tabs
- Instructions
- Setup List
- Priority Summary
Features
- Nineteen items across five rooms, each with a priority
- Running total down the list, so the line where the budget runs out is visible
- Every item marked as covered or not, in words rather than a signed number
- Priority summary totalling day one, first month and later
- Whether the budget covers each priority group cumulatively
- The share of the total that can safely wait
How it works
- 1Enter your budget at the top
- 2Give every item a priority and adjust priorities before prices
- 3Read the running total to see where the budget runs out
Who it's for
Anyone furnishing a first flat or house on a fixed budget.
Prices are illustrative for a small first flat bought new and vary widely by country and by whether you buy secondhand.
Frequently asked questions
Are the prices realistic?
They are illustrative for a small flat furnished new. Secondhand changes almost every line, usually by about half, and the priority structure matters more than the figures.
What counts as day one?
Somewhere to sleep, somewhere to keep food cold, a way to wash clothes and yourself, and enough kitchen to cook. Everything else can wait, which is what the priority column is for.
Why show a running total rather than just the sum?
Because the useful question is what you can have now, not what everything costs. The running total puts a visible line where your budget stops.
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