This morning I was going through our investments/assets/expenses which I keep in a custom excel document that I created a few years ago. This spreadsheet includes multiple tabs, and a couple charts. I call this my Financial Dashboard. At a glance I can easily see all the figures that make up my net worth. It also shows me what my expenses are, what percentage of my after tax income each expense is and how much left over money I should have after all investments, expenses etc are deducted from my income. All it takes is one look at this page and I find myself motivated to push forward. I’d guess I review this about once a week, more for the motivational aspect than anything. I update the data about every two weeks after I’ve made a couple investments (401K, Roth etc).
This morning, I happened to look through my “investment” folder on my PC. I found some older spreadsheets (about 8 years old). As soon as I opened one of them, I was struck with how much I’ve changed in my financial outlook. In the earlier days, I used to track my income and then just keep track of all the things that ate up that income. At the bottom of the page, the total seldom included any left overs after all the bills were paid. I was also struck with how many bills we had. Not just any bills, but bills that were for excess purchases, and a couple cars.
On my latest spreadsheet, I keep track of those kinds of things, but the focus is so drastically different than it was 8 years ago. Instead of focusing on all the bills, the majority of the spreadsheet is about net worth, passive income earnings, Point in time balances, estimated balance “look aheads” etc. Anyway, it really has been a gradual evolution to be where I am at today. I feel so much more empowered now. I feel in control and content with how we are progressing now because I can easily see where we are at.