Recording Your Finances

The_Hurricane

Hi All,

How do you record your finances? Mine is done as follows but I'm not sure if it's the most effective way. The figures below are only examples to keep the calculations simple.
Using Excel

Savings

Bank Account (Interest Rate 2%) £1000
Money Owed - £200
Investments (Premium Bonds) - £100

Total £1300

Debt

Mortgage (Interest rate 4%) £20,000
Student Loan £1000

Total = £21,000

Total Savings/Debt = -£19,700.

JohnRo

I use an open office doc and have a table of all non trivial incomes, outgoings and balances.

Update it every 6 months or so by adding a new table to see how much more or less it is in cash terms and compare how things are changing over time with previous entries.

typistretired

Have no mortgage as it is paid off. No debt as pay off credit card each month. But I do use an excel spreadsheet like you to record all investments and savings and shares. It shows the account number, current value, for savings current savings interest rate, and when any rate expires.

Meadows

How do I record my/our finances?

I use an Excel spreadsheet with multiple pages, a basic Accounts page with at a glance outgoings in one column and a breakdown of what I call my bills - for the want of a better word - (everything I save for each month that pays out at various points of the year).

A page with a running total and full breakdown of the ↑'Bills' (not really bills but all outgoing expenses through out the year plus a holiday fund and a house DIY fund, car ins etc.) this also shows the various savings accounts and current balances.

Then I have 12 pages Jan - Dec of what goes in and what comes out or goes to savings (other than the bills account) etc.

These have connecting cells for various things linking between multiple pages so if I change an amount on the first page it changes it on all the monthly pages or the 'Bills' page etc.

Any

Excel spreadsheet with several pages:

Page 1)
on left:
Income
wage
repayment of loan from relative

on right:
Outgoings
bills
car
fuel (estimate)
savings a
savings b
credit card repayment
etc

Total Income less Outgoings = spend money

on page 2 I have list of credit cards with notes to them, such as 0% period ends, APR%, etc

on page 3 I have notes for savings, debt repayment from relative schedule etc.

On page 1 I can write in extra bills such as Bday presents, holidays etc and then change savings amount accordingly to balance back to positive spending money..

I don't watch every penny, I just like to have an idea of commitments this month and available to spend so when I see something I like I know whether that is affordable without sacrifices or not this month. And if there are sacrifices, where do you make them.

veryintrigued

typistretired wrote: »

Have no mortgage as it is paid off. No debt as pay off credit card each month. But I do use an excel spreadsheet like you to record all investments and savings and shares. It shows the account number, current value, for savings current savings interest rate, and when any rate expires.

All of this above.

Mine is:

Institution and account name
Interest rate including when any derivations occur
Start date
Per month (if regular saver)
Dat of mont (if regular saver)
End date and term
Comments

And of course value

TonyMMM

I still use Microsoft Money - even though no longer available to buy in the UK (or supported). It is available as a free download from a number of sites and works really well. It automatically updates almost all fund & share prices and provides some decent analysis of %returns etc.

evenasus

I use Quicken - couldn't manage without it.

I can see all transactions - direct debits - savings accounts/ISAs etc right back to 1994.

Vortigern

TonyMMM wrote: »

I still use Microsoft Money - even though no longer available to buy in the UK (or supported). It is available as a free download from a number of sites and works really well. It automatically updates almost all fund & share prices and provides some decent analysis of %returns etc.

Another vote for Microsoft Money from me. It's no longer supported but still seems to work OK with Vista. I don't know if it works with later versions of Windows

Totton

iBank 4 if on a Mac, much better than the Quicken version.

Linton

Vortigern wrote: »

Another vote for Microsoft Money from me. It's no longer supported but still seems to work OK with Vista. I don't know if it works with later versions of Windows

MS Money works with W7 and W8, at least the latest freely available one does. And yes another vote for the software - it does everything I want.