As I mentioned Monday, I’m working on a new financial tracking/planning system. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish it yet, but I have made good progress.

I have the budget and tracking sheets put together. There are a few more equations that I want to include, and then it’ll be ready to expand to a full year (each set of pages covers one month). After that, a quick “averages” page to help me see how my money is generally spent, and it should be good to go.

You might wonder how this work fits into the Minimalist Experiment. I’m not approaching minimalism as a way to stop doing things, but to get rid of the clutter. My previous tracking system grew to the point of being unwieldy. It became a hassle to use it.

I tried out Mint.com which does everything that I want my system to do, but it doesn’t recognize the credit union that I am a member of, so all of my data is not in one place. This meant I still had some extra steps to go through.

To make my financial tracking/planning as simple as possible, I want a streamlined system that shows me an overview of all my information in one place. I want to spend as little time entering information as possible. Furthermore, it needs to be easy to read.

While it might take me more work up front to create my own system, it will do everything that I want it to. I will know how it works, so that I can make any necessary changes. In the end, this extra work will allow me to work (and stress) less in the long run. Simple finances, what a great concept!