I find it amazing how complicated one can make their personal finances. Especially since all it really amounts to is “spend less than you earn.” (This is something I struggle with, as well.)
I know I’ve written about personal finance before, but I’ve recently been wanting to redo my tracking/planning system. As part of the Minimalist Experiment, I’m going to try and make it as simple as possible.
The tracking/planning system needs to be easy to use, take little time, and provide a lot of useful output. To these ends, I will be sticking with a spreadsheet. One page will be an over-view of my finances, and the other 12 will show each month’s budget and expenses. Since I’ve already created a tracking system, it shouldn’t be hard to come up with a newer, simpler one.
Hopefully I’ll have this ready to share by Wednesday. Check back to see what I come up with!
I am interested to see how your new system works and what you come up with. I too recently felt the same way…that my financial tracking/planning system was way to complicated…it had just gotten out of hand.
My goal is to make it so simple that anyone can access it and have a clear understanding of my families personal finances and begin to manage if need be…primarily so if something happened to me my wife would be able to do so with ease.
After reading several PF blogs I checked out what type of systems they had created and decided to take the best ideas I’ve come across and personalize them to my needs. Currently in process…I hope to have it completed in the next week.