Free spreadsheet to track your expenses
The File: See Financial Tools
In last Fridays’ article, I discussed some of the various ways you can track your expenses. I’ve tried to keep things simple so you can get started. Here are a few notes about the file:
- The spreadsheet is designed for one full year of data.
- The spreadsheet calculates your savings on a year to date basis.
The current spreadsheet should give you an understanding of how your unplanned savings and total savings relate to income. Unplanned savings is the amount of money your bank account would increase or decrease if that’s the only place you stored money. In other words, its money that you have at your disposal. To get your total savings, you add retirement savings back in. I separately consider retirement savings because it is not accessible for many years. It is good to save for, but it is not the only thing you should save for.
The file also intentionally does not have a full-blown analysis of spending by category to keep things simple. I’ll later release an advanced version with a detailed spending analysis.
Please do tell me if you have comments about the spreadsheet. I would enjoy hearing about suggestions for more features or about things you find confusing or unnecessary. Please email me: presh (at) mindyourdecisions (dot) com.
All it takes is less than five minutes a day to enter your expenses and income information and you get a snapshot of your financial health. Enjoy.
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5 Responses to “Free spreadsheet to track your expenses”
A lesson to be learned for us all:
Do not take your paycheck for granted! While putting together my own financial cashflow spreadsheet this past weekend, I noticed what I thought was a math error in my weekly paycheck – I received $28 less than I thought I should have (given my gross salary/52). After looking at a few past paystubs I noticed that I’d been shorted this $28 every week for the entire year! I brought this to the attention of my HR dept this morning they will be cutting me my backpay next week (with interest!). Now, if I were smart I would immediately put this into a savings account b/c I obviously hadn’t missed this money the whole year (dumb). Anyway that’s my spreadsheet story.
By Joe P on Sep 10, 2007
@Joe P: That’s a good story, and it’s great you were on top of your paycheck. Was the $28 discrepancy due to a tax mistake they made? It’s awesome they’re giving you interest on it.
By Presh on Sep 10, 2007
Not a tax mistake – the HR lady just didn’t “get the memo”.
By Joe P on Sep 11, 2007
I carefully combed my direct deposit statement and discovered that I was missing $163.00 from a tax break I am eligible for every month until next year. I called HR and they immediately gave me a separate check with the missing amount calling it an “honest mistake.” If you multiply their “honest mistake” by 12 months, well, it adds up! Glad I caught it in time.
By Lightcatcher on Sep 29, 2007
@Lightcatcher: Nice catch–that’s a lot of money.
By Presh on Sep 29, 2007