Day 25) One-Stop Dashboard Spreadsheet and Tracking Sheet

Welcome to Day 25 of Where’s My Money Going? Month! This February 2009, I’m challenging readers (and myself) to track spending manually for 28 days. Don’t worry if you’re late to the party, you’re still welcome to join. Consider tracking your spending into March. Today’s article is a guest post by Prime Time Money.

Today I thought I’d share a couple of spreadsheets with you to help you stay on top of your finances. I know you’ve been tracking every detail of your spending this month. These sheets will add to your efforts and help you from a less granular level once the month of “Where’s My Money Going?” is over. I’ve provided a brief explanation about each one, and some links to download the sheets.

All-In-One Personal Finance Spreadsheet

First up is my all-in-one, dashboard-style spreadsheet. In general, this sheet puts all your personal financial information in one simple, printable spreadsheet. Here’s what’s included:

1. Personal Balance Sheet – This is simply a listing of all your assets and liabilities. It totals up to give you your personal net worth.

2. Personal Income Statement – This includes your income and all your recurring expenses. While this isn’t a full-blown budget, it will help you to visualize what you “have to” pay each month.

3. Financial Goals – It’s important to keep your financial goals in mind when your viewing net worth and income vs expense. This keeps the big picture in mind.

4. Online Login Credentials – If you’re worried about security you don’t have to use this section, but I like to have all of my login information in one spot so that my wife could pick up the peices if something happended to me.

This sheet will help you:

1. See your entire personal finance situation all in one spot. I believe a necessary starting point for making the most of your finances is to know exactly where you’re starting from. This sheet will give you that view.

2. Help a loved one in the case that something happens to you. If you’re the one source of financial knowledge for you family, you need this sheet or something like it stored away safely in the event that something happens to you so that your family can take control of your finances.

Article at Prime Time Money About the All-In-One Spreadsheet

For even more detail about this sheet, see this screencast video I made highlighting some of the features: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZv7QYVlo6U

Download This Sheet:

All-In-One Financial Spreadsheet (Excel)
All-In-One Financial Spreadsheet (OpenOffice)

Monthly Expense Tracker

Up next is the monthly expense tracker. This sheet will help you avoid late payments and overdrafts by tracking all of your monthly recurring expenses and showing you how they will affect your balance at different times in the month. This sheet includes a rolling calendar of recurring monthly expenses and income, as well as, your total available balance projected out for 30 days or more.

More on how this spreadsheet will help you:

1. Avoid Late Payments – Since you list out your monthly recurring expenses by payment due date, you’ll be able to quickly reference which bill is coming due at what date.

2. Prevent Bank Over-Drafts – Since the sheet contains a running balance, you’ll be able to roughly predict what your balance will be at various points in the month. This will give you a bit of warning so you can shift some money around from a different account.

Article at Prime Time Money About the Monthly Expense Tracker

Download This Sheet:

Monthly Expense Tracker (Excel)
Monthly Expense Tracker (OpenOffice)

While the sheets are by no means perfect, they’ve both helped me at times. Hopefully you can add them to your own financial tool belt and make some use of them too. If you have any questions or suggestions about the sheets, feel free to use the comments below…
This post was part of Where’s My Money Going? Month.

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