What do you include in your Finance Spreadsheet.

jamiedavies02

It would be interesting to see actual examples of peoples spreadsheets (obviously with sensitive figures changed to 0) and maybe create a super-spreadsheet

Idiophreak

jamiedavies02 wrote: »

It would be interesting to see actual examples of peoples spreadsheets (obviously with sensitive figures changed to 0) and maybe create a super-spreadsheet

Sorry, I tried to sanitise mine so I could post it up..but by the time I'd taken out names, amounts etc it really just seemed completely meaningless - hopefully other people will have more success.

Dirk_Gently_2

I use mine to manage our joint account as if were two virtual single accounts with the balances combined.

i.e. against each transaction I put the initial of either me or Mrs DG according to who spent the money, and it then uses a whole set of nested IF= statements to update the balance of the appropriate individual. There's also an option for sharing a transaction between us, by putting an "X" in the initial column, then the individual shares of the transaction into two extra columns so it updates the balance accordingly.

I also use conditional formatting to make the balances change colour if they go below certain thresholds.

Idiophreak

Dirk_Gently wrote: »

I use mine to manage our joint account as if were two virtual single accounts with the balances combined.

Just out of interest...but why? I don't really see why you'd have a joint account but run it as two separate ones? Why not just have two separate accounts?

evenasus

iclaudius wrote: »

I've tried quicken and other fancy spending tracking software out there such as Mint etc. But to be honest, all that synching and labelling never works and is way too time consuming. I prefer the flexibility of my own spreadsheet.

With Quicken, one update - be it a direct debit - the weekly shop etc - all the accounts update with one transaction input.

Keeping track of numerous savings accounts/ISAs & bonds is made simple too.

I've just had a quick count of savings accounts alive & dead that we have/have had since 1994 & there are 74.
I can see when they matured - which accounts they were transferred to etc.

If I want to know when we bought something - like a TV for instance, I can click search - enter Samsung TV or whatever and it takes me straight there.
Shows when we bought it, which account we used for paying for it.

Dirk_Gently_2

Idiophreak wrote: »

Just out of interest...but why? I don't really see why you'd have a joint account but run it as two separate ones? Why not just have two separate accounts?

A number of reasons - mainly joint bills. We split a lot of the bills (e.g. mortgage, power, etc) so it's a lot easier (IMHO!) to make the payments from a single bank account and do the "splitting" in the spreadsheet, rather than try do this from two individual accounts.

Also, not so much now but in the past, there were times when one of us was "overdrawn" individually but as the other was in "credit" we didn't hit an actual overdraft. It gives us flexibility to avoid paying overdraft interest because typically if one of us has a heavy month the other doesn't and so that keeps us in the black.

Idiophreak

Dirk_Gently wrote: »

A number of reasons - mainly joint bills. We split a lot of the bills (e.g. mortgage, power, etc) so it's a lot easier (IMHO!) to make the payments from a single bank account and do the "splitting" in the spreadsheet, rather than try do this from two individual accounts.

Also, not so much now but in the past, there were times when one of us was "overdrawn" individually but as the other was in "credit" we didn't hit an actual overdraft. It gives us flexibility to avoid paying overdraft interest because typically if one of us has a heavy month the other doesn't and so that keeps us in the black.

Yeah, we always end up calculating the bottom line for each account then transferring an amount from one account to the other (normally from her to me as I pay more bills...) to keep both in the black. Don't think it makes much odds eitherway - just wanted to check I wasn't missing something obvious