excel FIRE spreadsheet recommendation?

[jade]

Hi all,

Does anyone have an excel ER spreadsheet recommendation? Found a few online but they either seemed too simple or too complicated! 🤔 I also need one that I can have different income streams coming on board at different times.

btw, nice to meet @FrugalShrew @never give up @former player on the mmm call last night. :)

Cheers! 🎄

[never give up]

Nice to meet you too.

What are you trying to achieve with your spreadsheet? What do you want it to tell you?

[jade]

☺️ mainly to check we have enough money for all the years from now onwards and to monitor that going forward...

[FrugalShrew]

It was nice meeting you last week, @jade! I am not much of a spreadsheet person, so I don't have much to add to this thread, but I admire other people's spreadsheet habits. :)

[GilesMM]

It is best to build your own, gradually, so that you understand it well and can manage it.

Just put in years as columns and income and expenditures as rows, as many as you like.  You can include taxes, inflation, capital gains, mortgates, etc. whatever floats your boat.

[jade]

Thanks GilesMM.. I'd been coming to that conclusion as well over the break, but thanks for confirming that's the best way forward and suggested columns. 👍 Kind of looking forward to it being an excel geek! 🤓

[jade]

It was nice meeting you last week, @jade! I am not much of a spreadsheet person, so I don't have much to add to this thread, but I admire other people's spreadsheet habits. :)

He he.. thanks @FrugalShrew and lovely to meet you too! I used to use excel a lot on a previous job but much less now so looking forward to getting stuck in! Hope you had a good Christmas. 🥰

[jeroly]

I'm a fan of the Bogleheads variable withdrawal rate spreadsheet - it accounts for income streams in retirement that are either COLAd or not, and then sets up separate accounts to fund the gap between when they come online (e.g. taking SS at 70, a pension at 65, etc.), while also discounting the amounts that are not COLAd and won't be available until a future date.  If you don't like the withdrawal rate recommendations you can ignore them and use your own.

[jade]

I'm a fan of the Bogleheads variable withdrawal rate spreadsheet - it accounts for income streams in retirement that are either COLAd or not, and then sets up separate accounts to fund the gap between when they come online (e.g. taking SS at 70, a pension at 65, etc.), while also discounting the amounts that are not COLAd and won't be available until a future date.  If you don't like the withdrawal rate recommendations you can ignore them and use your own.

Thanks Jeroly, I had a bogleheads spreadsheets recommendation too that I was going to look into soon so I'll check the one you mention out specifically as that sounds exactly like what I was looking for. 👍

[MisterA]

btw, nice to meet @FrugalShrew @never give up @former player on the mmm call last night. :)

What was the MMM call? I didn't hear about that.

Regarding spreadsheets, I have my own, I use 3. The first keeps track of my current expenses. The next collates and records my investment values. The third predicts my income after FIRE, and factors in my stache drawdown, 2x state pensions (received at different times), 3x final salary pensions, etc. I use all 3 spreadsheets to predict future trends as our circumstances change, as well as reviewing the past. All my spreadsheets have evolved, and have pretty graphs and charts!

The difficult things are assumed return from the portfolio, and inflation. I tend to use a percentage return after inflation, which I believe means I can ignore inflation in my other calculations. Hope this is right.

Seasons greetings, everyone!

[jade]

btw, nice to meet @FrugalShrew @never give up @former player on the mmm call last night. :)

What was the MMM call? I didn't hear about that.

Regarding spreadsheets, I have my own, I use 3. The first keeps track of my current expenses. The next collates and records my investment values. The third predicts my income after FIRE, and factors in my stache drawdown, 2x state pensions (received at different times), 3x final salary pensions, etc. I use all 3 spreadsheets to predict future trends as our circumstances change, as well as reviewing the past. All my spreadsheets have evolved, and have pretty graphs and charts!

The difficult things are assumed return from the portfolio, and inflation. I tend to use a percentage return after inflation, which I believe means I can ignore inflation in my other calculations. Hope this is right.

Seasons greetings, everyone!

Hi MisterA 👋

@never give up set the call up and has the details of how to join. 😊

Thanks for the details of your spreadsheets.. I now have spreadsheet envy! 🤓 I want to create pretty charts and graphs too!  That sounds like a useful layout.. I think I was getting confused with investment values and also how to record when that income comes on board as well so separate spreadsheets sounds like the way to go as well as the way you deal with inflation, thanks for the tips.

[never give up]

Sorry I wasn't able to respond in detail earlier. Christmas prep took all of my time. I don't think there is one right way of doing this. I've just built my own spreadsheets based on what I feel works for me and what I want to know. I would always start with the requirement. What am I wanting to achieve? Then I have worked out the simplest way of recording and displaying that.

I have tabs that show:

Expenses
1. Detailed expenses by category by month. This includes income by category by month too and also allows me to calculate my savings rate per month and overall for the year. This really provides a detailed understanding of my relationship with money.

2. On an annual basis I group my expenses into a broader set of 5 categories for comparison between years and this allows me to understand my personal inflation rate for my core unavoidable expenses.

3. I also detail car ownership and food as detailed sets of expenses across many years to understand lumpiness and inflation. If you want to know how much I spent on food and household shopping in February 2014 I can tell you!

4. Lumpy home maintenance/repairs - I want to understand the lumpiness here.

Investments/FIRE
1. I had a mortgage pay off document when I was in full on "pay off the mortgage" mode.

2. I think most refer to it as an Investor Policy Statement (IPS) on here but I have a tab explaining what I'm trying to achieve from my ISA/DC pension investments, what the asset allocation should be etc, so I have something sane to read in times of panic!

3. I have another tab showing current detailed investment values. I only update my ISA every quarter and my Pension every six months. These allow me to produce asset allocation pie charts overall, Pension specific and pre-age 58 specific. This is just current value, so a snapshot in time for right now.

4. I have data and a line chart showing my overall stash income at different withdrawal rates relative to my expenses. These include target FIRE lines too. Stay on target!

5. Detailed pre-age 58 tab showing investment/contribution values across time. This shows progress and how I'm performing against target. I use a 4% inflation rate and a liability matching approach for this subset of my investments. See Monevator.

6. Detailed DC pension tab showing investment/contribution values across time.


In terms of working out what my targets should be I'm using PhilB's pots of joy approach. I can PM you about this if you want to know more but won't go off track here. Monevator also had a big piece on this (just search for Monevator ISA Pension split series).

Spreadsheets are fun!

[jade]

I completely understand @never give up .😊 & in hindsight most people aren't thinking about retirement spreadsheets a few days before Xmas lol! 🤦‍♀️ I was in spreadsheet mode and then went into Christmas mode and am still there 💤 but am looking forward to creating some spreadsheets when I get back to it and appreciate everyone's input. i also love that you could tell someone what you spent on food on 2014!

You've suggested a few more things I hadn't thought of before that I'll use, thank you. I think 🤞 we're about two and a half years off having the basics set for both of us being retired (if I decide to then) so that's kind of the simple goal / IPS but I'd like to feel more robust on the numbers and then we can also course correct as we go on after that. I'll check out the monevator series and I might do something similar with checking ISAs and pensions quarterly / half yearly too.

[never give up]

That’s great. You seem to be thinking about all the right things. Good luck with your new spreadsheets!

[jade]

That’s great. You seem to be thinking about all the right things. Good luck with your new spreadsheets!

Thanks as always nevergiveup 😊 I am looking forward to it!

[jade]

I am back to making my spreadsheet and found Lars Kroijer on YT has a good tutorial of how to build one in case anyone else wants to do this.