Best way of tracking savings, pension planning

DealingWithEstate

Hi there,
I hope someone will be able to advise me. Our financial situation has recently changed for the better (with both an inheritance and a promotion), and I want to put together something so I could have a better overview of our finances. I initially thought of a simple spreadsheet (I am reasonably excel literate) and think this would cover changes over time (ie what has happened in the past). But then I started thinking about retirement planning, and discovered various templates which forecast into the future (like this one). I'm not really sure what I want, or what I am asking... but how do others get an overview and plan?
Many thanks!

MallyGirl

I have run predictions and forecasts in things like guiide.co.uk but mostly I just track everything I have now, and spends, in excel.

carl05

I keep it simple and use a spread sheet , one for budget and actual spending, One for overall savings and investments and one more detailed one for ISA and SIPP investments , dividends/growth. I also use one to model expenditure and income from age 55 to 90 and use this for what if scenarios. You can make it as simple or complicated as you like. I am sure lots of people can recommend software such as Voyent Go?  or similar

Stubod

Spreadsheet all the way, using a line for each year comparing Income and expenditure. You can then have as many columns as you think you need for both, eg Income from pensions / salary / interest etc. Expenditure can be a detailed as you think you need, eg energy, food, holidays, cars, mortgage etc...

Roger175

We have a spreadsheet which has on the first tab our total net worth.  We have a list of assets down the side and I update it every month on a given date. It has a separate column for each update. The list of assets is split into sections which starts with mortgage (a negative value assuming you have one) then pensions, then all the savings/investment accounts and finally any property assets.

I have been doing this for around 30 years and it has been fantastic - I can track on a month to month basis how things are improving and it gives you a feel-good factor to be able to look back and see where you were last year, or 10 years ago etc.

As is gets bigger or as accounts become closed, I just use hide the row using the group/ungroup facility under 'data' on Excel. This way you don't ever lose any information and I could tell you now where all our money was in say June 2001, down to the exact account name and balance etc.

I also add comments as appropriate to illustrate the movement of money - for instance I might add a comment "£3,500 paid as lump sum to SIPPDeal" and add a similar comment in the pensions section to say "£3,500 moved from Halifax Super Saver" 

It is a relatively easy thing to set up and maintain and is absolutely invaluable when you've got a lot of savings accounts and investments. I don't actually know how one would keep account of their money without such a spreadsheet.

I also add additional Tabs from time to time to run pension projections, or house move costs or suchlike.

Finally I store it on my Google drive (so I can access it from any computer and can't loose it) and furthermore I make sure the wife knows how to access it should I walk in front of a bus.

TimSynths

MallyGirl said:

I have run predictions and forecasts in things like guiide.co.uk but mostly I just track everything I have now, and spends, in excel.

Never heard of guiide.co.uk but I am already filling in my details- big thanks!

Roger175

TimSynths said:

Never heard of guiide.co.uk but I am already filling in my details- big thanks!

Guiide is great, but I have a feeling it only works if you're already 55 and it only works for individuals, not couples. Nevertheless a really good bit of software which certainly gets you thinking in the right direction.

Suhusa

I use a simple spread sheet for my budget, an app to track my expenses (with detailed categories so I can analyse this once a year to see if I spend more on some stuff than I think), and a portfolio management programme to track my savings and pensions in one place (it can do properly calculated rates of return, which would be far too fiddly to do by hand). For future planning once a year I take my pensions and savings and analyse them. Some, including state pensions, have guaranteed payments, so they only need adding up, while for all the stuff thats invested in funds I do a rough estimate in R using real values for volatility and returns, with 10000 runs to give me an idea of a range where my investments could land on retirement. For all pensions and savings I take future contributions (or lack thereof) into account and varying levels of interest where relevant. Obviously the R runs are based on past values and extrapolating to the future but because I get stuff like percentiles out of it it gives me a better idea than just using average returns without taking volatility into account.

This is also clearly a result of having to much time during the pandemic, but now that I've all had it set up I'm not gonna stop using it.

L9XSS

Roger175 said:

TimSynths said:

Never heard of guiide.co.uk but I am already filling in my details- big thanks!

Guiide is great, but I have a feeling it only works if you're already 55 and it only works for individuals, not couples. Nevertheless a really good bit of software which certainly gets you thinking in the right direction.

Think it’s crashed....

kinger101

I use my own spreadsheet because it tracks things as I'd like with my own assumptions.

Relying on a tool someone else has built probably won't give you the output you want.

LHW99

Spreadsheet - well actually 3   - one for annual expenditure, one for savings / investments and one for annual total income. Began recording on paper well before Excel was a thing!