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:

1. The spreadsheet is designed for one full year of data.
2. 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.

The File: See Financial Tools