Author Topic: Is there a budget spreadsheet for life? (wedding, retirement, supporting kids...  (Read 2829 times)

braingrenades

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I've played with some cool personal budget spreadsheets. One of my favorites is a snowball spreadsheet where with a few entries of data you can see exactly how long it will take to pay something off. I'm recently engaged and we'll be footing the bill for our own wedding. On top of that my s.o. has about  $50K in student debt. Those are just the starting points. Is there a budget spreadsheet to help plan for the long-term? Something that would cover paying off student debt, wedding, supporting kids, all the way to retirement? What I envision is something you enter 2 incomes with expenses as well as how many kids you plan on having and it calculates the rest. If something is out there I'd like to play with it. The end goal is to come up with a long-term financial plan for us.

matchewed

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???

Probably not. I'm not even certain what you mean by "calculate the rest". You come up with the plan, the spreadsheet would be there to help track or visualize the end goal.

TreesBikesLove

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There is no point in budgeting your entire life because you will be constantly revising it. You have no idea what kind of medical problems lie in you, your partner's, or your eventual childrens' futures. Tackle each challenge as they happen in the most responsible way possible and save the rest for retirement. Living within your means and adapting to emergencies will set a good example for your children and will lead to a rewarding life. Let every challenge strengthen your resolve to accomplish your goals in spite of it all.

My partner and I are also planning our wedding and she is amassing a lot of debt in graduate school. Even though we are net cash flow negative we are  not going to skip the wedding or honeymoon. While our long-term goal is retirement, our life-goal is to enjoy each moment; skipping our wedding and honeymoon will accomplish the former goal at expense of the latter.

Lski'stash

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When we face large life events, I like to make a budget spreadsheet for it, make one column of 'averages' that people spend on it for the area, and one column for what we spent so we can see the difference. I attached a couple of mine for you to see. It's simplistic, but it let us figure out what we'd need, and then budget it out.

I feel the need to point out that the wedding budget was done pre-MMM days. Probably wouldn't have spent as much as we did today, but I still think we did alright.

HipGnosis

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Google: loan/mortgage calculator
But why are you assuming you will need to 'pay off' everything?  The current low interest rates won't last much longer.

MStangRacer

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ive been looking for something similar.  Like a life allocation plan/pie chart or something. What the ave person spends % of on homes cars kids etc.

Please share what you find or come up with. 

matchewed

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ive been looking for something similar.  Like a life allocation plan/pie chart or something. What the ave person spends % of on homes cars kids etc.

Please share what you find or come up with.

Um... google?
https://www.google.com/search?q=average+american+spending+pie+chart&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

astralweeks

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You might check out Personal Capital.  It lets you plan for expenses or income that might pop up in a few years or only last for a certain time (saving for college, supporting a parent, rental income, etc), and projects how that will have an impact on your savings and investment plans.