How to keep track of it all

Fphelp123

I was wondering how people keep track of their net worth and future pension worth. I have tried to do it via a spreadsheet but have not been too successful as I have 2 defined benefit Pensions with different payment dates, a lifetime ISA a stocks and shares isa and cash savings. I was trying to model what I would have at different ages but got lost. Are there any apps or ready made spreadsheets out there?  

colsten

I use AceMoney. It's essentially a glorified spreadsheet but saves me to do all the calculations and formulas. 

MS Money is much the same. It's available for free in several places as it's no longer supported but it still seems to be working well. I wanted a supported package, so I migrated to AceMoney and paid my one-off £40-ish a few years ago.

You might still need a personal spreadsheet if you want to do "what if" modelling.

coachman12

I employ a nice man who looks after my finances and gives me a summary every month, or when I ask him, and he lists it all out in simple broad terms as a summary. But he also appends a full list of company shares and their movements, all my savings, my properties etc. And, last of all, we meet regularly to discuss strategy. It's worked for a long time and I would not alter it.
Of course I understand that, depending on sums involved and unwillingness to pay for a specialist who acts as your talking and understandable spreadsheet, the way to go is to buy an inexpensive and simple modelling system such as Ace Money etc. 
Whichever way you go,Fphelp123, you've certainly got the right idea in wanting to make sure you keep track of your finances. All the best.

AlanP_2

I use MSMoney to track all our accounts - current / savings / mortgage / investments & DC pensions.

Downside is you need to record financial transactions to make it accurate, so every card or cash spend gets logged. Upside is you can allocate each spend , or even each item, to different expenditure classifications so you know what you are spending on what and there are a range of reports you can run including Nett Worth or the data can be exported to Excel.

It isn't much help in terms of "future pension" situation, so I use Excel for that. A paid for alternative is RetireEasy.

AnotherJoe

I think retireeasy is pretty good for getting a handle on your overall retirement finances to start with  And after 2 or 3 months subscription And playing around With options,  once you've settled on a plan you can probably end the subscription  and maybe go back in a few years later. 

MaxiRobriguez

I do it all via spreadsheet, modeling different scenarios to get a range of potential net worth by age.

No idea what the actual outcome will be but by using ranges (lower/upper are quite aggressive) it gives me 99% confidence that in a likely worst case scenario I'll be able to retire at 60 still.

Linton

AlanP_2 said:

I use MSMoney to track all our accounts - current / savings / mortgage / investments & DC pensions.

Downside is you need to record financial transactions to make it accurate, so every card or cash spend gets logged. Upside is you can allocate each spend , or even each item, to different expenditure classifications so you know what you are spending on what and there are a range of reports you can run including Nett Worth or the data can be exported to Excel.

It isn't much help in terms of "future pension" situation, so I use Excel for that. A paid for alternative is RetireEasy.

I retired on the basis of MS Money's Lifetime Planner and it's still my day-to-day tool for setting the budget and reviewing progress.  I pay for almost everything with a debit card and so full bank transactions can be downloaded and mostly automatically classified.  The Gaiersoft software is used to load shares and fund prices from an FT portfolio,  Updating is semi-automatic and only takes a few minutes daily for investment prices and weekly for expenditure.

I also run a complex spreadsheet model (it includes detailed and accurate tax calculations) but this is only updated annually at the end of the tax year.

george4064

I just use a good old fashioned spreadsheet that I created myself, nothing technical but at least I fully understand what it can and can't do!

fin_

This thread is gold!
I'm new to the forum and joined to run a survey to understand better how people solve this exact problem!
I've been using a custom spreadsheet for a while but find it so cumbersome to keep track of all the changes happening, not to mention doing any "what if" modelling.
I'm thinking of building an app that would easily show all your savings, loans and investments across different banks and providers and would also show what you're likely to have several years from now. 

In later stages, the app could allow you to simulate different scenarios like what would happen if you change your pension contribution and maybe even have an element of financial education bordering on financial advice by recommending more tax-efficient ways to save money like ISAs and other government schemes. 

Does that sound interesting to anyone?

AnotherJoe

fin_ said:

This thread is gold!
I'm new to the forum and joined to run a survey to understand better how people solve this exact problem!
I've been using a custom spreadsheet for a while but find it so cumbersome to keep track of all the changes happening, not to mention doing any "what if" modelling.
I'm thinking of building an app that would easily show all your savings, loans and investments across different banks and providers and would also show what you're likely to have several years from now. 

In later stages, the app could allow you to simulate different scenarios like what would happen if you change your pension contribution and maybe even have an element of financial education bordering on financial advice by recommending more tax-efficient ways to save money like ISAs and other government schemes. 

Does that sound interesting to anyone?

Well, i guess the folks at Retireeasy thought it would, since they built exactly that.

And when i saw an IFA mabe 5 or 6 years ago (free service provided by my company) they had a tool like that as well which they

didnt hand out but kept in house but gave you the output.

Firecalc and Firesym also do this to a certain extent  (maybe a big extent, I havent kept up with them), so worth you checking thoss out, maybe they woudl do what you want already. Or you could spend perhaps £25 or whatever on 2-3 months with RE. Becauseonce you've modelled up your plans and started on them they dont change by the month, so you dont need to be subscribing for years. Maybe dip back in every few years.

AlanP_2

Linton said:

AlanP_2 said:

I use MSMoney to track all our accounts - current / savings / mortgage / investments & DC pensions.

Downside is you need to record financial transactions to make it accurate, so every card or cash spend gets logged. Upside is you can allocate each spend , or even each item, to different expenditure classifications so you know what you are spending on what and there are a range of reports you can run including Nett Worth or the data can be exported to Excel.

It isn't much help in terms of "future pension" situation, so I use Excel for that. A paid for alternative is RetireEasy.

I retired on the basis of MS Money's Lifetime Planner and it's still my day-to-day tool for setting the budget and reviewing progress.  I pay for almost everything with a debit card and so full bank transactions can be downloaded and mostly automatically classified.  The Gaiersoft software is used to load shares and fund prices from an FT portfolio,  Updating is semi-automatic and only takes a few minutes daily for investment prices and weekly for expenditure.

I also run a complex spreadsheet model (it includes detailed and accurate tax calculations) but this is only updated annually at the end of the tax year.

My version is the basic one so no Planning tools.