Hello!
About a week or so ago I decided I wanted to make a new spreadsheet to use while budgeting. This was mainly due to the fact that my wife and I had recently done a big move and were/are changing jobs, so it seemed like a natural time to reevaluate how we were tracking our finances.
I first checked here and found this awesome post by user u/cooledtube. I loved how he or she was implementing using a Google Form on their phone, since I was already doing something similar, but this seemed quicker and more efficient than what I was doing. So I did what I would advise anyone to do next: I took her great idea and modified it for me. I loved the result, so I thought I would share!
I'm following the same basic structure:
-
A Google Form that I access from my phone to record expenses (link here)
-
A Google Sheet to organize the collected data (link here)
In a nutshell, how the spread sheet works is a combination of you entering in information for each month in specific places (all of the income, for example, needs to be entered by you) and in other places the spreadsheet will automatically sort data you give it (all of the variable costs are being pulled from the data you enter into the Google Form over time). My goal was to make it so that each month I only had to enter in the data that was likely to change (even if it changes slightly) like precise income and specific bills (phone plans, for example, which may fluctuate by a dollar or two). The rest of the sheet you don't really have to touch, as long as you're using the Google Form, since it will sort everything for you.
I then made a few visuals to simply help me see and track different trends over time (like if I'm spending more, less, or the same for a certain category). Lastly, I have a tab (Variable Cost Locations) which just tracks where I'm spending my money most frequently. I'm not sure how useful this tab will be, but I thought it would be interesting to see what places I'm visiting most.
Anyways, I've been enjoying it so far and am looking forward to continuing to use it over the next year. If anyone wants it, feel free to make a copy of it. And I'd love to help answer any questions if anyone needs help with the programming part (it's all pretty straightforward stuff that you can probably figure out using Google, but I'm around if you need!)
Just a heads up: for the sake of this example, the Google Form is live but the data it gathers will not be organized in the Google Sheet. I did this because I noticed cooledtube had a bunch of people submit data that did really wonky things with his spreadsheet. (Shout out to whoever said they spent $250,000,666,999 on "Lots and lots of dick"!) I created a sample list of how the data being collected would look in the tab "FormRe1" that is based off of my own current usage for September.
Also, I just started using this, hence why September is really the only month with data in it. And I made up data for things I don't have (I don't actually own a vehicle, so I don't pay insurance). If you look at this and immediately feel the need to tell me how I need to adjust my spending habits, don't worry.
Submitted September 08, 2017 at 06:32PM by GooseCaboose http://ift.tt/2xSp4OJ
