Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I thought it might be useful to show how I track my finances, so I put together a blog post explaining what I do. It's a modified version of the tracking spreadsheet that akratic put together some time ago.
Comprehensive Guide to Tracking Your Finances
Here's some of the questions this spreadsheet will help you answer (lifted shamelessly from blog post):
What investment returns would you need if you wanted to retire today? What dividend stocks have posted consistent returns annually? How much did you spend last month on food? How much did you earn in dividends? At current rates, how long do you have to wait to retire? If you’re laid off, how long will you last without a job? What percent of your income have you saved each month? Is your savings rate better than last year? If you want to travel, what type of hotel costs the same as staying at home? Exactly how much do you have saved in checking accounts, safety deposits, investment accounts, your 401k? What were your big expenses two months ago?
Let me know if you have questions or suggestions. How do you track your finances?

wow m741! thank you

I use excel to track my finances but I suspect my formulae aren't ere approved, plus my files are lacking in the visual department.
Will take a *very* detailed look this week when I take breaks at work this week... teehehe.

Thanks for the Google spreadsheet. I'm not quite ready to do extreme tracking. When I have enough to open a brokerage account, I'll definitely copy the stocks tab into my own Google spreadsheet.
Perhaps I'll understand the formulas enough to fix my own to show ERE calculations one day Right now my savings = money I put in my bank account or my AFORE voluntary contributions sub account.

Hmm can I change or edit categories in the FI- and itemized expenses tabs? I'm trying to add some new ones but they don't show up in the summary.

Sure, you can change the categories. Should be as easy as adding the category in the -FI tab and adding a row in the summary. Once you have an expense with that category on itemized expenses it should show up in the summary.
One thing to make sure of is that the greyed-out columns reflect your new category.

hi m741
just want to say thanks about putting up the excel workbook again.
I changed the format of mine after studying yours. I used to use pivot tables (manual udpates after making any changes)
now I use sumifs statements. all updates are automated teehehe. I even changed some of my work related excel work from pivot to sumifs.
thanks.

Glad it was helpful. Credit goes to akratic - I wasn't aware of sumifs either .