Simple Tools for Personal Finance

1) Intro

2) Brief notes before investing

3) Spreadsheet templates

3.1) Budget Goals

3.2) Annual Budget

3.3) (investment) Portfolio

3.4) (investment) Annual Portfolio Balance

1) Intro

Fortunately, today there are plenty of good resources to learn about personal finance. I won't try to teach you about it. If you haven’t educated yourself about it, please do. One of the most helpful and practical books I’ve read on the subject is “I Will Teach You to Be Rich,” by Ramit Sethi.

Here I’ll simply offer a tool that can be helpful to keep track of your savings and investments. Not always we find simple and effective ways to keep track of your finances. People offer apps and paid programs. I don’t particularly trust adding my personal data on those, and I think a simple spreadsheet is more than enough.

I’ve looked for many online, but they are either overly complex, or more focused on budgeting. I just wanted one that could give me an overview of my monthly balance, and check how my investments were doing overall. So I made one, which I share here. Feel free to check and modify it as you wish.

2) Before investing

A few brief notes before investing (these were helpful to me):

• Consider Credit Unions over normal banks for your daily needs. I’ve found that some of them have more respectful policies (that is true in my region, but do research yours).
• Don’t pay fees if you don’t need to. Today there are plenty of online banks and exchanges offering people accounts with no fees.
• Be very careful with credit cards. From a financial point of view, you can get free money (if you know what you are doing), as long as you never get into debt, and always pay the bills in full. But, in terms of privacy… well, there is none.
• Keep it simple. Avoid anxiety and greed. Beating the market it’s not worth your time, nor your peace of mind (and you will probably fail). Low-cost index funds (ETF’s) are already a great option for the vast majority of people (Warren Buffett himself suggests this strategy). You can buy particular stocks as a complement, if you truly believe or wish to support a company (be cautious if you choose to do so).
• Avoid moving around your money too much because it adds more fees. Keep in mind that the time of investment (duration), the interest rate, and the amount invested are the three main factors that can help you in your journey.
• Get rid of your debts first, then make an emergency fund, then start investing.
• Understand asset allocation to rebalance and keep your investments (I’ve suggested a few options on the last tab of the spreadsheet).
• Understand which types of investments and savings are appropriate for shorter and longer term goals.
• Give money. If you are reading this, it’s very likely that you are in a privileged position. The point is not how much you give, but with which disposition you do so. Be generous, help people. Don’t be dependent on money, for greed is a horrible trap.
• On crypto currency: Be cautious and do your research. If you decide to invest in it, keep it simple (1-5% of your investments should be a safe approach).
• Don’t be afraid of investing and managing your money. Educating yourself helps to break the fear. Don’t blindly follow your bank’s suggestions.

3) Spreadsheets templates

Both spreadsheets are .sc files, so you can download it and open it with Spreadsheet Calculator (terminal spreadsheet).

3.1) Budget Goals

This is where you can enter your ideal / expected monthly budget (including your savings and investing goals). Once you enter in your data in column B (Amount), the total rows will fill up.

3.2) Annual Budget

This is where you enter what you actually make (income), spend (expenses) and save (savings + investing) each month. Like the "Budget Goals," the totals will calculate automatically.

3.3) (investment) Portfolio

You will find six sessions: Emergency Fund, Fixed Income, Equities (Stocks), REIT, Crypto, and Insurance Fund. The fields on which you add values are: account, sector, ticker, date of entry, quantity, price of entry, today’s price, and category.

The categories are divided in: asset preservation, (AP - those are mainly to safeguard your patrimony, with lower risk and lower growth), asset creation (AC - those are to grow your patrimony, having a higher risk), and income generation (IG - those are to generate cash more frequently). Depending on your goals, you should consider allocating your investments within these groups in different percentages. Do your research to understand to which category your investment belongs (one could be a mix of two categories).

You have a column with a general overview and your consolidated results on the side.

3.4) (investment) Annual Portfolio Balance

Here you will find a monthly overview for the year. You simply grab the updated data from the other spreadsheet (at the end of each month), plus your checking account balance, so you can have an overview of your balance. The percentages show how much is in each category and how the total amount compares to the previous month.

There is also a field for references, where you can add how much other coins and gold value in comparison to your local coin (those are optional, but helpful). You can also set an annual goal (last column).

Additionally, I would also recommend to keep a file for Archive and Suggestions. The archive is simply to keep a log of each investment, with data such as: price of entry, price of exit, date, quantity, and so on. On suggestions you can simply use it as a draft with ideas, things to remember, products you are considering to buy, asset allocation models, etc. You could keep those on the same spreadsheet or on a separate file.

This has been very helpful to me over the years. Maybe you will find some use for it too.

PS: Another complementary tools could be GNU Pem (for basic tracking of income and expenses), and / or Ledger (accounting).

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portfolio.sc 7 KiB Sep 13 2021

budget_goals.sc 1 KiB Sep 10 2021

annual_portfolio_balance.sc 4 KiB Sep 10 2021

annual_budget.sc 7 KiB Sep 10 2021