TL:DR Awesome Google Sheet for financial tracking. Formatted nicely for viewing and printing. Easy to use formulas. Ready for you to copy, with instructions on how to set up. Really good instructions for changing your financial situation! Also tons of financial resources in a Drive folder. Contemplating a financial New Year's Resolution? It will be super useful to use this spreadsheet at the start of 2019.
Ok thanks for reading. Long time viewer, but seldom poster. Here's the Financial Spreadsheet System I made. It can seem intimidating or overwhelming but once you get the hang of it you will find that it's easy and very thorough. I've built it up by using it to do my own finances each week/month/year so let me know if you have any questions about how to integrate it into your life. I can easily make videos for any tab to give you more info on how to use it.
Here is the google drive folder of everything in the system. To start, view the Annual Dashboard Set Up instructions document (and copy to your drive or print). You can follow the instructions to set up your own copy of the Annual Personal Financial Dashboard (template).
Follow the Set Up instructions document to make your own copy of the APFDashboard from the template. Once you have your copy, it's private to you.
Also check out the Resources folder for documents, lessons, pictures, and other financial fitness resources I've put together.
First things first
First, the best way to use this system is with Google Drive, Sheets, and Docs. Those programs are easy to learn to use and are secure.
The simple description of this system is a combination of two documents and a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet if for recording your finances and predicting. The documents are (1) a resources document with information for you to read and (2) a Financial Fitness Report with routines for you to follow in order to improve your financial fitness.
In these instructions I’ll describe the system so you can learn how to use it regularly; and I’ll give you a checklist of how to set it up for the first time.
In this folder, you’ll find all the documents and step by step instructions for you.
What is the Annual Personal Financial Dashboard?
The Annual Personal Financial Dashboard is a Google Sheet that tracks many aspects of your finances. The tabs make it easy for you to be organized, but the real power comes from the easy-to-review charts that are automatically generated.
There are many tabs on the sheet, and some are linked together. The tabs in the sheet are:
- Setup - use this tab to set up your dashboard by entering values once.
- Snapshot & Audit - use this tab for tracking overall financial situation
A tab for entering various balances and interest rates to get a snapshot view of your finances. Assets vs. Liabilities, interest generated, overall annual expenses, and some other calculations are done automatically for you to ‘audit’ your financial situation. - Monthly Budget - use this tab for tracking monthly budgets from Monthly Transactions
A tab for recording your budgets (expenses vs. income) and calculating your monthly change. - Monthly Transactions - use this tab to record all transactions
For recording your monthly transactions (automatically totaled to your Budget) - Paycheck Recorder #1 & #2 - use these tabs for recording paycheck details and tracking insights for two persons or two sources. Gain lots of insights automatically analyzed and totaled from tracking only a few values.
- Income - use this tab for tracking annual income by month. Good for recording regular income in addition to irregular work, gifts, etc. as well as passive income from interest and other sources
- Expenses - use this tab for tracking all annual expenses by month. All categories are modifiable or can be hidden to fit your lifestyle.
- Annual Summary - use this tab to total all values on the Income and Expenses tabs. Any changes made to the categories on those tabs will be reflected here. This tab will show monthly values for Income and Expenses (in each category) and monthly cash flow & ending balances.
- Annual Balance Tracker - use this tab to track the trend of the balances of your assets and liabilities. Record end-of-the-month balances to track trends in your finances.
- Charts - this is the cool tab (for nerds). :) Use this tab to view charts of the numbers on the other tabs. You’ll find charts from all the other tabs here; making use of color and graphs to visually showcase your financial situation.
**Bonus tabs - not everyone will need or use these tabs. They are bonus materials.
- Investment Tracker - use this tab as a simple investment tracker. Enter your investment ID and shares then Google will automatically update the value of your investment.
- Power of Savings - this tab will calculate your net savings if you invest various amounts of your income throughout your life. A powerful demonstration of compound interest. It will calculate from your current age and the salary total from your Income tab. If you’re savvy with sheets you can easily change this sheet.
- Student Loan Payoff Comparison - use this tab to compare your (potentially) various loan payoff options. With this tab, you can enter your loan balance, rate, and payment amount to view the number of payments, interest, and total cost of each repayment option. Enter your payment options (IBR, ICR, refinance, etc) into the grid on the left, then those amounts will be options to select from the drop-down. Once you select a payment amount, the rows will calculate payments until payoff or 400 months.
Once you set up your Dashboard the first time, it will become very easy for you to use it regularly to track your financial situation. Please let me know if it's helpful to you! I have been helped so much by the information I've learned here that I hope I can give back.
Submitted January 01, 2019 at 04:20PM by Robot_Joey http://bit.ly/2F1ibSO
