Comments on: Using a Spreadsheet to Realize Your Financial Values

By: Chris from Detroit

Chris from Detroit — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 04:36:52 +0000

i agree. Having to manually enter in your items is a pain in the but but it makes me rethinking buying that item. Because the more items i buy the more I have to enter in.

By: Bev

Bev — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:31:22 +0000

I used an excel spreadsheet to track my spending. It took so long to enter the information every week(hours to sort receipts,categorize,enter the amounts, verify against statements) that it wore me out and I stopped. Then I realized we use our debit cards for all our purchases and never carry cash so I bought the Quicken software package. In addition, I marked an envelope “Weekly Receipts” into which we drop our receipts for the week. Then every Saturday morning, like clockwork, the first thing I do is download all checking, saving and investment account transactions. I pull out the receipts and match them up with my bank transactions and enter the appropriate categories according to what was spent. And, just like in my former spreadsheet I split out the categories. For instance, groceries has sub-categories such as snacks, meat, fruit/veggies etc. so I know exactly where each dollar went. Only now it goes much faster in Quicken and I can quickly run a report and see exactly how much we spend and where. What’s more I can easily compare it with the same time frame one year ago, or a month ago or whatever and quickly determine what I need to do to adjust. For instance, I learned that last year my second biggest spending category, behind the mortgage, was groceries! Now I monitor our spending weekly and have cut our grocery expenses by two-thirds each month from what they use to be. So I think a financial software package can be used and be just as good as a spreadsheet only faster because the transactions can be downloaded instead of the tedium of having to enter each one. The main thing is that you have to be willing to put in the time and for me, a spreadsheet was too time intensive. Now I have the same information but it takes less then a half an hour every week to get it!

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:55:40 +0000

I’ve tried Quicken and MS Money but it was overkill, so I switched to Google spreadsheets (free and available online anywhere).

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:30:58 +0000

I absolutely, wholeheartedly disagree. First off we paid $30 for Quicken Deluxe 2007. Best $30 I EVER spent. The value Quicken provides me as the financial planner of the house is having all our banking, credit, and brokerage accounts in one place, and the ability to create charts and graphs based on custom data I provide. Right now it takes me about five minutes to download my transactions, which I do weekly. If I had to do this by hand, it would probably take two hours, and there would no doubt be errors. The problem may lie I think with the people who only download and don’t bother reviewing their statements or comparing their expenses to their expectations.

By: kentuckyliz

kentuckyliz — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:51:15 +0000

I like your article! I find that keeping a spreadsheet of my monthly cash flow plan really cracks the whip on me…and I am really intentional about my spending and money management. It helps me keep an eye on how self-indulgent I’m being. I stay conscious on different costs and what needs to be shopped…like recently, I shopped my auto insurance and it’s 1/3 of what it was.

For walking-around money (food, gas, entertainment, blow), I use cash envelopes and have a standard amount each pay period that goes into those, and it’s finite. The bonus is that I don’t have to go back and log and classify receipts all the time. The cash allocation is in the budget and I can spend it on that category without thinking twice. It saves quite a bit of labor. Using cash also helps keep me from overspending.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:37:29 +0000

Works for me! I’m too cheap to buy financial management software, anyway.

By: Dividend growth investor

Dividend growth investor — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:42:05 +0000

I like your article Jaimie. I myself always balance my checkbook “offline”. If more people did that, they would realize what they are doing to their financial health.

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:38:30 +0000

Since we use our debit cards for just about all purchases (easiest way to track for us) and I enter all our data into Quicken I am highly motivated not to spend money because I know I’ll have to enter the data at some point.