It's probably my incompetence (or lack of patience perhaps!) with searching on the LemonFool but I cannot find:
- a spreadsheet template for expenditure
- that I can use to enter and track expenditure over a few years
- to establish a baseline for expenditure in retirement.
Anyone know of one - before I go an create my own which will no doubt be inferior and incomplete!
Thanks in advance!
B
Expenditure tracking spreadsheet
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- Lemon Pip
- Posts: 67
- Joined: July 31st, 2017, 11:30 am
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- Lemon Half
- Posts: 8675
- Joined: November 4th, 2016, 1:16 pm
Re: Expenditure tracking spreadsheet
Does it need to be a spreadsheet?Bhoddhisatva wrote:
It's probably my incompetence (or lack of patience perhaps!) with searching on the LemonFool but I cannot find:
- a spreadsheet template for expenditure
- that I can use to enter and track expenditure over a few years
- to establish a baseline for expenditure in retirement.
Anyone know of one - before I go an create my own which will no doubt be inferior and incomplete!
I only ask because Microsoft Money is still available to download, and I've been using it for years for exactly the purpose you're envisaging -
https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... 37#p131837
The above was posted in April, but I've just checked the links and they are still working fine.
You can export from Microsoft Money into a spreadsheet, by the way, if you're thinking of a specific scenario where you may need to do that.
Money is good in that you can set up your own granular categories, so you can be as high-level or low-level as you like - it's entirely up to you, but for the task you're looking to do, I'd say that it's probably ideal and certainly worth a play with to check and see if it's suitable.
This single piece of software absolutely transformed my money-management processes overnight - I highly recommend it.
Cheers,
Itsallaguess
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- Lemon Slice
- Posts: 507
- Joined: November 4th, 2016, 9:12 am
Re: Expenditure tracking spreadsheet
There's one at moneysavingexpert.com that might be of use
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/conte ... lanner.xls
I don't use it myself - basically I don't need it - but I downloaded a copy a while back just to see what it contained and it looked pretty decent.
cheers
Spiderbill
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/conte ... lanner.xls
I don't use it myself - basically I don't need it - but I downloaded a copy a while back just to see what it contained and it looked pretty decent.
cheers
Spiderbill
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- Lemon Slice
- Posts: 424
- Joined: November 4th, 2016, 1:56 pm
Re: Expenditure tracking spreadsheet
I can also vouch for Microsoft Money - I've been using it for years to track spending by various categories. It's fascinating to see the trends over time (eg when my kids got to 17 and there is a spike in car insurance and petrol), and it gives a good basis for confident forecasting of future spending.Itsallaguess wrote:Does it need to be a spreadsheet?
I only ask because Microsoft Money is still available to download, and I've been using it for years for exactly the purpose you're envisaging
I download all the transactions from Money into excel on an annual basis, and use a pivot table to summarise spending by category in each year - double-clicking a total then shows every transaction that makes up the total.
Unlike Itsallaguess, I download all the transactions from my bank, so there is a difference in purpose there: I think Itsallaguess sees it as a way of verifying bank statements, whereas I see it just as a copy of the statements. Transactions are automatically assigned a category (if the payee has been used before) so it requires little effort to update.
I have an issue to solve though, which is that I've started using a credit card on holiday abroad (to avoid the 2% surcharge on my debit card), so the detail of those transactions is lost. All I see currently in Money is the total monthly payment made from the debit card categorised under, say, "Mallorca 2018".
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- Lemon Slice
- Posts: 881
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Re: Expenditure tracking spreadsheet
MyNameIsUrl wrote:I have an issue to solve though, which is that I've started using a credit card on holiday abroad (to avoid the 2% surcharge on my debit card), so the detail of those transactions is lost.
I'd also vote for MSMoney. On this specific issue, you don't need to lose the granularity. I track CC spending in the same way as a debit card - when you set up a CC account ( or afterwards in "Change account settings" ) there is an option "Account Tracking", where you can opt to track individual charges. The CC account then allows you to follow your spend in the same detail as a debit card.