How do you organise your finances?

calleyw

elantan wrote:

can anyone explain to a total novice in both computing and spreadsheets exactly how this works and where i can get the stuff from i noticed a few of you talking about excell what is it? where can i get it from and for a total novice is it easy? thanks in advance

Excel is spreadsheet. But it is made by Mickeysoft sorry Microsoft and cost money.

I use something called open office. It has word processor, spreadsheet etc and best of all it is free.

Down load it from here http://www.openoffice.org/

You can save in all sorts of formats just incase you need to give a file to someone else.

I am sure there are plently of websites that give tutorials on spreadsheets.


Yours


Calley

LookingAhead

I would be lost without my Excel spreadsheet.

I have a sheet per month which has on it, my salary & Boyfriend's contribution to the mortgage/house, as incomings (in blue).

I list the mortgage and all other direct debits that I know are going out (in red!).
I insert a row with estimates for other things that need paying that month i.e. home insurance in July.....MOT in March etc. These get updated as I get quotes for exact amounts where possible.

If any other incomings appear (i.e. Amazon sales/Ebay sales) then I insert another row with the figure coming in.

I also insert another row when I write a cheque at Sainsburys (leaves the cash in my account a bit longer! Can be a God send at the end of the month!)

So it just keeps a running total of my bank balance to the penny.

The next month's sheet has a "starting" figure which is simply the amount of money left over on the last day of the month and so it all starts again.

I have a separate spreadsheet for my Barclaycard balance where I can see the balance coming down and I have made a note on which month the 0% rate ends.

The same goes for the Amazon card.

The two credit card sheets in conjunction with the main spreadhseet help me plan what I can spend reducing CC debt each month.

I've formatted the balance column so that if I go overdrawn the figures go red. It keeps me focussed!

Currently I have a "forecast" right up to the end of November.

As for day to day spends, I used to keep yet another spreadsheet for that but I kept forgetting to update it so now I just have a notepad on the coffee table and I write things in manually every day now and read it every so often.....shocking at times!!