Over the past several months I've been creating a financial workbook that allows me to track my monthly expenses and financial summary the way I want to see them. I know there's tons of tools out there (YNAB, Mint, Quicken, etc), which I've used and value. I'm currently a Quicken user but find there is too little flexibility to see the data how I want to see it and found myself wasting tons of time trying to circumvent the tool. Instead, I use it for it's main benefit, which is automatically aggregating my accounts and categorizing all transactions. From there, I dump into this workbook that I thought some folks may find interesting (I find it hard to categorize "excel nerding" as badass, but in the spirit of this forum, I'll try).
I've included real data in there and while I live in a high COL area, you'll quickly be able to see that I'm far from Mustachian and instead attribute my 50%+ YTD savings rate to an income I'm very fortunate to have and a favorable bonus in Q1.
A few points to the attachment I hope successfully uploaded
1) Psychologically, I like to view my 401K selections as expenses, so you'll notice that for the purposes of monthly net income, I subtract out my 401K contribution. This also allows me to offset the monthly income of the 401K match.
2) Unique to my situation - while I'm interested in tracking household savings rate, etc, I'm also interested in tracking how I'd be doing on my salary alone as my wife will be taking a year off due to Baby #1. Clearly some expenses need some attention.
3) You'll notice comical spending amounts in certain categories (Auto & Transport and Home - Other). This is due to a not-at-fault car accident, expensive beginning of year registration fees and home renovations/furniture purchases I "needed" </eye roll> to have.
4) This spreadsheet includes 2015 only, but if you're curious about how the budget was developed, I also tracked this for 2014 and set budget amounts using each month's relativity to the average 2014 monthly expense * my somewhat subjective target for that category.
5) I elected to track from a gross salary perspective, as this allows me to monitor my tax payments and paycheck deductions (insurance, commuting expenses, taxes, etc.) One could easily change this to net pay if desired.
As you can see, this is probably a bit much, but something I'm interested in maintaining. For one, it helps me examine my transactions for fraud, but also lets me beat myself up about stupid expenditures throughout the month. So if anyone has suggestions for how to improve the workbook, please share!
