tracking your finances

little_green

Thomas_Crown wrote: »

Actually, the tax year is 6th April - 5th April.

true but since i'm monthly paid it would be april-march pay checks captured i think.

thanks for all the responses btw more than i thought this would get & interesting to see people's different responses.
i probably should just pull my finger out & use something like MS money but i spent so long creating spreadsheets I don't want to give up on them.
as someone else mentioned, i have a spreadsheet for year on year comparisons but for everyday expenditure & budgeting 12 months at a time is probably enough.

JustAnotherSaver

Jan 1st - Dec 31st.

Sea_Shell

I use a calendar year, but I also keep a tax year sheet in respect of interest payments, in the hope of tying this up with HMRC's records (for which I've had limited success).

There'll a quite a few of us, I suspect, finalising our 2019 spreadsheets next week, and turning our eyes to 2020.

blue.peter

little_green wrote: »

i probably should just pull my finger out & use something like MS money but i spent so long creating spreadsheets I don't want to give up on them.

Then don't. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There's no point in switching to a different way of doing things unless it offers a definite benefit. If you like your spreadsheet, then continue to use it.

If you've concluded that switching to a tax year basis is the right thing for you to do, maybe you could achieve this simply by tweaking your spreadsheet?

Are your tax affairs complicated enough that you need to use a tax year basis? I find that my P60s give me enough information for that. The only other thing that I need to track on a tax year basis is my ISA contributions, but the provider does that for me - every time I log in to my account, I can see exactly how much more I'm allowed to subscribe in the present tax year. If/when interest rates rise, I might have to record the interest that I'm paid, and will do this on a spreadsheet, organised by tax year.

getmore4less

little_green wrote: »

true but since i'm monthly paid it would be april-march pay checks captured i think.

thanks for all the responses btw more than i thought this would get & interesting to see people's different responses.
i probably should just pull my finger out & use something like MS money but i spent so long creating spreadsheets I don't want to give up on them.
as someone else mentioned, i have a spreadsheet for year on year comparisons but for everyday expenditure & budgeting 12 months at a time is probably enough.

If happy with your sheets stick with them.

Have a play with MSM to get ideas for improvements to your sheets.

The key to modelling money flow needs a database to hold the transaction details, MSM does that.

getmore4less

The problem with retrospective plans is you have spent the money before you realise you needed it for something else.

The ultimate goal with financial planning is knowing when you can stop earning because the pot is big enough.

Robisere

As a pensioner, I have to set my spreadsheets to the Tax Year. Then I can simply change amounts as the income and regular outgoing figures change. Also, at my age I have to consider taking into account how easy it would be for my wife to use the same system, so I have made sure she knows what to do with the spreadsheet, should my perch suddenly be vacated.

Eco_Miser

little_green wrote: »

new year means a fresh set of spreadsheets for tracking my finances & budgeting etc.
what i'm interested to know is whether most of you run a calendar year (Jan-Dec) or tax year (April - march) ?
I've always done calendar year but thinking maybe better to change to tax year?

Some of my sheets are calendar, some tax, some multi-year, one is 15 month Jan - March.
It depends what the purpose of the sheet is.

Eco_Miser

getmore4less wrote: »

The problem with retrospective plans is you have spent the money before you realise you needed it for something else.

That's only a problem if you spend the money without considering what else it may be needed for - and you don't need a full rolling year budget to do that.

getmore4less wrote: »

The ultimate goal with financial planning is knowing when you can stop earning because the pot is big enough.

Once the pot is big enough to cover any reasonable demands in the forthcoming year, you can stop planning in detail.

MDMD

One complication I have is I use the accrual method of recording expenses (so if I use a 0% CC I record the cost as “spent” even though the cash may not leave the bank for weeks, months or even years).

I also have been until recently (when a number of the rates have dropped to my self imposed 2% floor) doing the multiple regular saver and current account hokey-kokey.

Both of those mean that I have to have a “cash flow” as well as a budget as the budget may show me in a healthy surplus but if I haven’t funded the accounts properly then I can end up overdrawn. In practice it’s just a list of all the payments that go out (although I am trialling the HSBC “balance after bills” feature) but it’s a reminder that cash is king!