Personal Finance Dashboard

[Donnie]

Recently there have been some discussions about net worth trackers and alternatives to Mint and Personal Capital given some people do not want to upload all of their accounts to a third party.  I also don't like these aggregators (both because of privacy concerns and because they often don't work properly) so have used an Excel spreadsheet to track my net worth.

Someone on the forum asked about my spreadsheet, so here is a summary.  The spreadsheet has three tabs.  In one tab, I enter the value of each of my accounts each month.  The second tab is the dashboard that summarizes the info, updates progress towards goals, and gives other portfolio information.  There is a screenshot below with obscured info (please let me know if I missed anything!).  The third tab runs projections based on relatively simple assumptions (starting balance, monthly contribution, assumed return rate).  I have rarely gone into that tab after I set it up.

It would take some time for me to make this flexible enough to distribute, but I could do this if there were interest.  Would be interesting to see how other people track their net worth / assets.

[Zaphod]

Thats beautiful. Mine is based off some template that doesnt seem too work very well on its own. I do use the aggregators but agree they are not very good.

[q-school]

It’s the most beautiful thing these eyes have ever seen.

[ENT Doc]

[Hatton]

I like that you show total net worth and liquid net worth.  It is beautiful

[ajm184]

Really nice.  I do some of the same things via excel but you track on a monthly versus quarterly for me.  You have what appears to be a lot linkage between the tabs.  In particular, I like the tracking metrics towards you goals.  That is in particular something that I would like to understand better form a formula standpoint to potentially incorporate into my use of excel.

[VagabondMD]

I use “Numbers”, Mac version of Excel. It does the job for me, but not nearly as elegantly as yours, @Donnie.

[CM]

Snazzy.

I plug the numbers into a spreadsheet, but without graphs or charts.

[DMFA]

Not bad. I haven't put graphs on mine but might do.

[I Find This Humerus]

Anyone have any excel or word files they use they would like to share with the group?

[White.Beard.Doc]

Very nice indeed!

I would love to give it a try if you are interested in sharing your great work.

[The White Coat Investor]

Wow. I feel so inadequate.

[ENT Doc]

Yeah, definitely share if you can.  BTW, nice 1/17.    

[Hatton]

I also use numbers on a mac.  If anybody has a template I would love it.

[Donnie]

Thanks for the compliments. I’m the type who always tinkers with things like this, so have probably spent way too much time working on it! I also couldn’t find a very good template, so decided to do it myself. I will try to get it into a form that is shareable. The formulas end up being somewhat complex compared to a typical spreadsheet so that everything updates automatically when the new month is entered. If something goes wrong, I can fix it, but I need to make sure it is robust enough for others to use It without breaking it.

One of the reasons I made the spreadsheet is because I am a big believer in the idea that the only way to improve something is to measure it.  I think tracking progress and having summaries that immediately hit you with the takeaway message is critical to achieving goals and correcting behavior if you are not on track.

To respond to a couple comments, my cash inflows can be lumpy, hence the random spikes. The monthly progress towards goals requires some modeling. It is not complex, but as anything in a spreadsheet, you need to keep things very organized and repeatable so you can scale it up with mostly copy and paste.