Anyone Create Personal Financial Statements/Annual Reports?

[martyconlonontherun]

My friend and I are both CPAs and discuss our views on personal finance. We joked about doing personal finance statements together. So far I have a rough balance sheet and income statement. Also included Q4 budget to actual bridge, q1 forecast, financial independencs date based on three scenarios and millionaire date with same scenarios. Next is footnote disclosures on items like debt. Figure it would be cool to look back in five years.

I put them in a semi professional PowerPoint. Thinking of adding key non financial metrics?

It's definitely over the top and silly but really seemed to force me to think about my goals in shorter periods and analyze shortfalls and unexpected expenses.

Anyone do this or have suggestions?

[tyler2016]

Not a CPA, but I do. Monthly income statements and cash flow statements. Quarterly balance sheets.

My cash flow statements aren't true cash flow statements because some things like utilities are amortized to make a consistent budget.  I add adjustments for how the expense varied for the month. For example it last year electricity was 100 and this year 90, I add 10 dollars to the months cash flow.

The problem with the way most personal finance methods work is they don't do a good job with accounting for taxes and they tend to be this wierd hybrid of income statements and cash flow. The methods I have seen  tend to count principal payments on debt as expenses.

[GrumpyPenguin]

I kind of LOL'ed at this idea, but I can see why some people would like to do it.  So, no I never have, but to each their own. 

For me it just sounds like a lot of work that wouldn't pass a brief benefit/cost analysis of my time.

[Irregular Joe]

I've made a Balance Sheet every month for 10 years.

On the last day of every month, I pay our credit cards & bills and update our Net Worth statement.  It's in Excel, and it's very rewarding to see go back and see how things have grown and changed.

[martyconlonontherun]

I kind of LOL'ed at this idea, but I can see why some people would like to do it.  So, no I never have, but to each their own. 

For me it just sounds like a lot of work that wouldni't pass a brief benefit/cost analysis of my time.

Yeah really nothing more than a way to memorialize my journey with limited real life benefits. Probably took 15 hours on an international plane trip but probably 3 hours a quarter going forward based on my normal tracking and set up excels. It was worth it from an entertainment perspective. No idea if I will get bored in two years

[Fishindude]

Made my living as a self employed general contractor so got in the habit many years ago of keeping and up to date personal financial statement which our banker and bonding company both expected.   Now I just do it to keep track personally, but can't say that I retain old ones or look back at past records.

[Threshkin]

I make a personal balance sheet twice a year.
 
I use this information to update our projected assets forecast statement.  Originally this was my "Are we ready to FIRE?" worksheet.  Two years post FIRE I use it to ensure that we stay on track.

[PDXTabs]

I try to do it monthly, but sometimes I forget.

[LoanShark]

Yep. Just balance sheet though. Updated quarterly.

[Zikoris]

I do an annual financial report and throw it up on our blog every December/January. Just a breakdown of our spending, our annual savings rate, net worth increase over previous year, and any commentary on interesting financial things that happened, like job changes. Sometimes I throw in our plans for the new year, if we have any. It's pretty cool having them all up there to look back at.

[aGracefulStomp]

I have an excel document where the first sheet is my total net-worth broken down by asset allocation, and put into a pie chart. I don't have any debt so it's all investments.

The second sheet has my goal asset allocation, my current asset allocation and whether I need to rebalance and by how much (calculated automatically based on a formula).

Then the third sheet has my networth as at the 15th of every month, put into a line chart. Considering whether to record my contributions.

My asset allocation / net-worth pie chart is very pretty to look at!

[marty998]

I keep a balance sheet with current month and prior December as comparative.

Wash it away each year, no need for me to track history. Look back too often and you start living in the past.

My asset allocation / net-worth pie chart is very pretty to look at!

Mine too :)

[SwitchActiveDWG]

Monthly statements and yearly statements. For me it is extremely beneficial. Doesn't take but a few minutes every months to generate the spreadsheet and I do the year end statement whenever I do taxes.

[dude]

I've made a Balance Sheet every month for 10 years.

On the last day of every month, I pay our credit cards & bills and update our Net Worth statement.  It's in Excel, and it's very rewarding to see go back and see how things have grown and changed.

Similar, though only started doing it 4 years ago. Also, I don't use a spreadsheet, I just put in on paper in columns marked "assets" and "liabilities." Really love seeing how it's progressed over time.

[Dances With Fire]

My friend and I are both CPAs and discuss our views on personal finance. We joked about doing personal finance statements together. So far I have a rough balance sheet and income statement. Also included Q4 budget to actual bridge, q1 forecast, financial independencs date based on three scenarios and millionaire date with same scenarios. Next is footnote disclosures on items like debt. Figure it would be cool to look back in five years.

I put them in a semi professional PowerPoint. Thinking of adding key non financial metrics?

It's definitely over the top and silly but really seemed to force me to think about my goals in shorter periods and analyze shortfalls and unexpected expenses.

Anyone do this or have suggestions?

^^^ Wait until you look back in decades!

After reading many books and articles on investing years ago, a few authors suggested to treat your investments as a business or side gig as we call it today. This was one of those "ah ha moments" for me. With VERY crude spreadsheets and capital gains reports, I wanted to see how much % of my investments would cover my income/ living expenses.

I have kept a couple of files just to look back to remind us of how far we have come (starting from basically Zero) and see  how the power of compounding truly works in the real world...

[Secret Stache]

Yes, I capture monthly balances on all cash and investment accounts as well as the balance on our mortgage.  I don't do a traditional net worth calculation but like to see how much I have in cash and securities.  Additionally I track spending each month (to include taxes, housing, car purchases etc) and a rolling 18 month average to help determine how much we will need in retirement.

Then I do the same thing with award points/miles.  I like looking at the line chart for our liquid assets over time and seeing our miles stacked up in a bar chart.

For each my wife and I have an email thread with a brief blurb on anything notable and strategy going forward.  Nothing fancy just something like ""Liquid net worth increased/decreased from X to Y.  Spending was X which is higher than normal due to purchasing a car."  or "Airline miles = X,  Hotel Miles = Y.  Currently spent $2k of $3k required min spend to reach the bonus on Chase card which must be completed by 12/31/2018.  Once complete will sign up for IHG card. 

I probably spend 10 minutes a month on this and it has actually helped me dispute an Elite Qualifying night claim with Marriott.  Since we keep such detailed notes and screen shots of our stays we noticed after the merger that the number of nights stayed decreased.  We are close to lifetime Gold status so we want credit for every bit. 

[Lan Mandragoran]

I try to, do mint/pcapital and a yearly networth report. However I find it very difficult to know how cashflow really worked when you have a few rental units. So it ends up being.... well we were able to invest $$$$ and we have $$$$ still in our bank account so x - y probably = roughly my cashflow lol :shrug:.

[trollwithamustache]

yep, every 6 months we update a simple 1 pager. the various accounts are trended. I find it quite helpful... its easy to feel like no progress was made, but when you look back at the data, it feels pretty good.