Personal Finance, made simple in Excel
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Christie - Customer interviewChristie heard about XLYourFinances (xlyf) from a mutual friend. She had been using the spreadsheet for approximately 18 months. I followed up with Christie to see if she would be willing to do a personal finance interview and she agreed.
Tell me about your personal finance journey and where you think you are on that journey?
"My financial journey began as a young child, when my parents presented me with a Giving Bank and started paying me a $1/week for doing chores. My dad is a professional financial advisor, so stewardship and wise management practices were ingrained into me from an early age. As an adult, I now realize how impactful financial decisions can be, and thanks to his training, I didn't have to learn too many lessons the hard way. Currently, I am at a place where I'm working to get a realistic picture of our family's spending, in order to create and maintain a practical budget." How did you handle your personal finances before you started using xlyourfinances?
"Before xlyourfinances, I used a very basic spreadsheet that I created myself. I put together my "best guess" of a monthly budget, and then tried to remember to record expenses by collecting receipts and manually entering the data. It was time consuming and inaccurate." How has your view of your finances changed since you started using xlyourfinances?
"Xlyourfinances was exactly the tool I needed to finally feel like I had control of all the details. My previous attempts at expense tracking and monitoring a budget were haphazard and ineffective. It's so nice to have all this information in one place. It also has helped me to develop a weekly routine of reviewing all of our transactions and keep an eye on all of our accounts." What do you like about the spreadsheet. Any favorite features?
"My favorite feature, by far, is the integration of Mint.com data! I love having live data from all my financial accounts that uploads directly into my xlyourfinances spreadsheet... no more saving receipts and manual data entry! Also, I categorize expenses pretty specifically, so I liked being able to set up my own categories and having lots of them. The budget feature is also great! How convenient to input your budget one time, and then have xlyourfinances keep tabs on your spending to let you know how you're doing throughout the month." Were there any surprises or 'a-ha' moments once you started using xlyourfinances?
My biggest surprise was seeing our actual spending. Xlyourfinances makes it easy to categorize expenses, and that was the most crucial information for me to see to make positive changes. What advice would you give for someone who is struggling with their finances?
First of all, you need a system. Throwing receipts into a shoebox and hoping there's enough money at the end of the month is always going to leave you scrambling. Secondly, set some goals. Figure out what's most important to you: debt reduction, savings, decreased spending, etc. and implement practical steps that can develop into good habits. And lastly, sometimes it just comes down to old-fashioned discipline. Learn to say no, to prioritize, and value the delayed gratification of proper money management. It's worth it! Any other thoughts or ideas you would like to share? I appreciate that you refer to this as a "personal financial journey", because it's exactly that, a journey. A process. Keep learning and keep building on the good habits you already have in place. Change and growth are always possible, but they usually don't happen overnight. |
Eric - Customer interviewEric is a young business professional who purchased the program around the time he got married. I followed up with Eric to see if he would be willing to do a personal finance interview and he agreed.
Tell me about your personal finance journey and where you think you are on that journey?
"My personal finance journey began when I first got my personal bank account and debit card around the age of 13. I was always a big saver, so I did not struggle with overspending. However, I never really looked to the future or what the ramifications were of my financial decisions. Now, I take these decisions much more seriously. I'm also constantly trying to learn money management strategies to improve my family's financial picture." How did you handle your personal finances before you started using xlyourfinances?
"Before xlyourfinances, I never tracked anything. I would just gauge how much I spent based on if I felt like I was spending too much recently. I'd occasionally check my balances, and that's it. I never had a budget." How has your view of finances changed since you started using xlyourfinances?
I used to cringe when I hadn't checked my accounts in a while. Now I have a firm grasp on every detail of my finances, so I actually look forward to sitting down and reviewing our transactions. It's also impacted my wife, as before, she hated numbers, finances, all of it. Now she gets excited to see how we are doing in different categories each week. What do you like about the spreadsheet, any favorite features?
I definitely wanted to track my spending in Excel, not Mint.com or some other clunky program. My plan was to just build my own Excel spreadsheet, but it would've taken me so much time and it still wouldn't have come close to as good as this one. My favorite feature is how easy it is to import data from my accounts into the spreadsheet. I love that it only takes me about 10 minutes every week to import. What advice would you give for someone who is struggling with their finances?
Track everything. You can't fix something if you don't even know what's exactly wrong with it. You have to measure your results. Were there any surprises or 'aha' moments once you started using xlyourfinances?
My biggest surprise was realizing how quickly little transactions can add up into a big number at the end of a month in a certain category. It forced me to think about all of those minuscule transactions that don't seem like a big deal. What level would you recommend someone be at before using xlyourfinances? Beginner. The spreadsheet is designed to be very easy to use, so that anyone can pick it up and use it. All of the heavy Excel lifting is already built in. No formulas, no formatting, just copy and paste your data in and categorize how you want. |
Still not sure? Start with the Free Budget Template
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Price: Free
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Budget spreadsheet overview
If you ever tried a do it yourself project at home without the right tools, you know how frustrating this can be. Think of personal finance as one big do-it-yourself project, if you don't have the right tools, it's going to be tough! The average family has over a thousand transactions a year, it is next to impossible to make sense of all these transactions without the right tool. When it comes to downloading these transactions, the first thing you realize is that your bank and credit card companies do not use the same format. This is where xlyourfinances shines. You can easily align and label your data with a few clicks. Xlyourfinances already knows which transactions have been posted and which ones are ok to post and with one click remove the ones that were already posted. Once posted, they now appear on the transactions tab where you can filter, sort, and edit all your data in one place. Using the powerful autofilter in Excel, you can quickly find what you have posted, narrowing it down by description, date, or amount. Everything gets accumulated into the summary tab. You can easily see by financial account and category what you 've earned and spent over multiple years or by months within one year. The toughest thing about budgeting is predicting the future. This is made a little bit easier if you know what was spent in the past. xlyourfinances pulls the past 3 years to help you predict what you think will happen this year. As you work down through the categories to make the changes you think are necessary. You can drill down just by double clicking on any category. This will show the expenses for any period and compare it to the budget for the same pro-rated period of time. As the month progresses, you can see your actual spending beside your budget. The budget is prorated by the number of days that have occurred in the month. You can also compare how you are doing YTD. The red, yellow or green lights are quick indicators of areas you are doing good or are having trouble in. Now that you see how easy budgeting is now that you have all your transactions and historical data in one place, let's move on to the big picture. If you ever sit down with a financial advisor, one of the first things they will do is make you put together a personal finance statement. All it is, is a list of your assets and liabilities to determine your net worth. Xlyourfinances allows you to add assets and liabilities and track them over the years to see if you are improving or not. The importance of doing this is that when you are making mortgage payments you do not always see the benefit, but over time you can see that you are building equity and increasing your net worth. So the big picture is to see how you're doing over the years to make sure you are achieving your goals. Xlyourfinances makes it possible to truly maintain your personal finances in Excel. Automated, customizable, personal finance spreadsheet features: Stores unlimited years | Unlimited financial accounts | Unlimited categories | Auto-labels transactions | One click removes duplicates from downloads | Easily reconciles to your financial accounts | Cash Forecast | Simplifies budgeting | Summary reports show actual vs. budget for any time period | Monthly and yearly summaries | Personal financial statement | Access to step-by-step video instructions | Free Upgrades! xlyourfinances is the right tool for the job, I hope you give it a try. Thank you! forecasting spreadsheet overview
Xlyourfinances forecasting spreadsheet, is a powerful tool for helping you predict your future financial position. This video is a brief overview of how the spreadsheet works. A good thing to have in mind is how far out into the future you want to try to forecast. The nice thing is you can make as many forecasts as you would like. So if you want to forecast the next five years, you can make a copy and label that five years, and from there you could create a five year forecast. The longer you try to forecast the less accurate it's going to be. None of us know what the future brings, however, through this forecasting spreadsheet, you can get some comfort as to whether you are on the right path or not. If I make this much per year and spend this much, how much money do I have leftover for what I want to try to do in the future. Whether it's planning for vacation, saving for your kids college, or saving for retirement. What makes it more complicated than just am I spending less than I'm earning, is layering in what kind of investment return you realistically plan on getting off your savings, and the unexpected large expenses that might come down the road. So, with that said, let's get started on some of the basics of the spreadsheet. There is a paycheck breakdown tab where you can calculate pre-tax and post tax items that come out of your paycheck which is very important as you calculate where all your money is going (Roth 401(k), HSA, health insurance etc.). Everything is on an annual amount: annual earnings, annual spend, annual return on investment. At the top, you can put in your current age and then at your retirement age you are able to separate working years from retirement years. The first section is cash flow, money coming in versus money going out, we need to make sure that the cash position is positive. If it is a negative cash flow year, you see the next section is “Coverage”, which is available collateral, available unsecured credit and available savings. This evaluates whether you have enough collateral or savings, and if need be, unsecured credit (i.e. credit cards), to cover the year’s shortfall. That is what coverage means, can you cover your negative cash flow for the year. Obviously if you're using credit cards to ‘cover’ the year, you are building up a liability that you're going to have to pay off someday. All these things are impacting assets and liabilities, which as you know, assets minus liabilities equal your net worth. So as the years go along you can see if your net worth is improving or getting worse based on what you think is going to happen. There are two default sections, one general section where you can put in your general spending (i.e. fixed and variable expenses). If you want, you can go into more detail and list out as many categories as you would like. The next section is large expenses. These would be expenses like vacations, home remodeling, college, buying a car etc. In addition to the default sections, you can also add a loan, a loan with an asset and an investment. In the instructional videos we walk through exactly how to do this and how you can change variables and scenarios at different points in the future. You can see how this activity of listing out your financial position and projecting it into the future is very helpful for identifying if you're going to have enough cash year to year, and whether you are on the right track to accomplish your goals. I hope you give it a try and I look forward to walking it through with you. Thank you! |
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XLYourFinances.com is owned and operated by XLYourFinances, LLC.
All XLYourFinances.com spreadsheets are copyright protected, © 2010-2022.
Automated Spreadsheets are not very common. I have yet to find any for sale anywhere else on the internet. Once you start using it, you won't know how you ever maintained your finances without it. If you have any questions about the spreadsheet, just send me an e-mail at xlyourfinances 'at' gmail 'dot' com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Thank you,
Brad Hoffer
Thank you,
Brad Hoffer