I have been thinking financial thoughts today.
I notice a fashion for showing 'Net Worth'lately rather than earnings v outgoings. WHilst this makes a lot of sense to me as an accountant. After all net worth is your personal balance sheet showing the state of your financial play at a given time. Whereas just looking at your income and your expenditure does not anything other that what you managed to bring in and to spend in any period. Net worth makes more sense if you are worried about or concentrating on your future security. Income v expenditure is useful as a shortterm monitoring tool to ensure you are not over spending.
I keep two sorts of spreadsheet to help us monitor where we are & how we are doing towards our financial independence.
I keep a spreadsheet with a budget column and a column for each month. I then have a row for each type of income and a sub total. Next a Set of rows for fixed expenditure, such as council tax and mortgage repayments. A sub total row and then a row which shows me monthly income less fixed costs. Next some rows showing variable costs, holiday payments, credit card repayments etc, another sub total and then another income less costs row. Lastly rows showing transfers to saving account and a final balance of income less all the months expenditure.
The second spreadshhet shows all of our assets on one side, proeprty we own, pensioin investments, savings etc. On the other side any outstanding debts, mortage owed, any credit card and other debt. All of the good news less all of the bad news is our net worth.
At the moment our balance sheet is looking pretty good but our Profit and loss account is a bit tight. This is because we choose to repay more quickly on our mortgage than we needed to and also because we made some additional purchases at a price as an investment for the fmaily in future.
I would be happy to set up a spreadsheet which can be downloaded from the site if anyone would find this useful. Um, I dont know how to do it (the download I mean, the spreadsheet bit is easy.)but I will try to work it out if I can. I think it is really important that we all understand how our money works for us to help us to be secure in future. Its really just the flip side of being frugal.
To share files, you need to use a file hosting site; I use http://www.savefile.com/ for mine. Register with them, upload your file, and then post the link in your blog. It's surprisingly simple actually.
ReplyDeleteThank you Stephen. I had no idea such a place existed. I will make my spreadsheet a bit more robust by locking a few cells down and then loading them up in case they are useful to anyone.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the help
Lizzie
Hi Lizzie, I would like to look at your speadsheet. I teach budgeting at our Neighbourhood
ReplyDeleteCentre and like to see materials from professional financial people.
Thanks for commenting on my blog. :- )
Hi Rhonda Jean
ReplyDeleteI am going to amend the version I use at home so that is not so easy to break, locking cells etc & then I will email it over to you.(as well as having a go at making available here as per instructions from Stephen).
I really admire what you put into your centre & hopefully you can get some use from my spreadsheets. I want to spread the word that financial freedom comes from knowing where it all goes & not from avoiding checking your bank balance at all costs and getting as many credit cards as you can. I work in social housing and have muscled my way on to the team which produces the quarterly magazine just so that I can get a few financial tips out to our residents. Every little really does help.
Lizzie
Can't email you! If you use savefile, you will find that you have to press the upload button immediately after entering the recognition code, otherwise it will tell you you've entered the wrong code. If you get stuck, just email me via my profile.
ReplyDeleteThanks Stephen
ReplyDeleteIf all goes well I should be ready to load them tonight so we will soon know.