So short backstory, I've been going through job changes and constantly adjusting my payments, expenses, etc as life continues to change. I put this spreadsheet together about a year ago as a simple way of keeping track of where my money was going and how changes I made impacted them.
It's pretty basic and only has a few parts to it - the information requested is detailed and takes a good few minutes to log into your accounts to get the information, but it's worth it as a monthly exercise.
Income Tab: A place to put all monthly income, and sources for keeping track. Easy to use for salary, but also simple to update if you make different amounts each month.
Debts Tab: A place to pull all credit cards, loans, and any debt that can be paid off as well as your monthly payments. By putting in your interest rates, you can see a 12-month projection based on your payments, and start planning around payoff plans (in 3 months, Bill A will be paid off, which means then I can start putting money toward Bill B, etc).
Bills: A place for all never-ending bills like utilities and housing, or memberships like Netflix.
Financial Review: A tab that pulls your expenses, debts, income and breaks it down into a weekly budget for spending. You can adjust a goal for savings per month, to account for in your weekly budget. You also have 1-3-6-12 month projections to view roughly how your numbers will look if you continue on the same path of payments/budgets/savings/etc.
It's not some fancy website, app, program, etc - but makes for quick work when considering making a large purchase, getting a new membership, or in general trying to keep to a reasonable budget or save for something big.
It's helped me grow my savings and also gave me a clear path for which debts to pay off, focus on, etc. So I figured I'd share it with the folks on this sub and if anyone had any recommendations, changes, or in general could benefit from it then that would make me happy!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GthJ_-c_xuY7iLtwuR3y-1pAFpBLZHrLA51X1CwUUeI/edit?usp=sharing
The way I've been using this has been to have 3 different accounts in place with my bank:
- Bill Checking - All income goes into this account
- Budget Checking - All random purchases come from this account, set to decline when empty
- Main Savings - All saving happens here
I then used the automatic transfer option (I bank with Wells Fargo, but I imagine it's a pretty standard thing):
- Weekly deposits from Bill Checking to Budget Checking of my budgeted amount
- Monthly deposit of my Savings goal to Main Savings account
- All auto-payments directed toward my Bill Checking account
If there's any leftover money in my Budget checking when my new amount drops in, I either look at it as a good excuse to splurge on a purchase or plan a night out, or if I don't have anything I want I'll transfer it into my Savings account and consider it extra. If my Budget card declines, I can move money from Savings but it's a good reminder that I wasn't very good with my budget that week and need to be more mindful.
Once a month, I save my document named for the new date and update the information on the debts or any other changes. I try to evaluate my savings and debt impact to see if things have been close and figure out if my plan has been realistic.
Hope this helps anyone out. Have a great upcoming week! Feel free to share any additional tips below if you think it's helpful to those trying to get their finances in order - no matter how much money you do/don't have, being mindful of where it's going is a good way to keep you moving in the right direction.
Let me know if there's anything that doesn't work, could work better, or thoughts! Definitely let me know if you have anything that you notice I've completely messed up while trying to clean this up for putting out there - my finances could have been getting better through sheer luck alone! :)
Submitted September 19, 2018 at 07:46AM by Hosnovan https://ift.tt/2MMZEZQ
