Spreadsheet templates for tracking year to year

[maxdouttsp]

I am looking for spreadsheet template ideas to use to track my monthly finances and retirement goal. Any links to good templates?

I do not want to track my budget, which seems to be 90% of the templates I am finding on google. I am beyond setting up a spreadsheet and tracking how much I spend on dinner out, household cleaning supplies, or a car payment to figure out how much money is left to invest (or figure out what expenses to eliminate to free up money to invest).

Saving money is easy for me. Its the tracking from year to year and finding out if we are on track is the hard part for me. I have enough saved where it is time to get serious about tracking going forward.

The stock investment performance templates I could find seem to all want to get overly fancy with automatic downloads. Comments are that they don't work as links or websites go away. A monthly or quarterly manual update is more my style and it is easy to plug in numbers from monthly or quarterly statements.

I would like to find out my individual investment yearly gain and loss percentages, which add up to a yearly overall return. Then track it from year to year.

A couple of graphs would be nice. Maybe compare my portfolio to the s&p 500 or to an average 7% gain each year.

I could make my own, but I am struggling with how to show gain by investment return and what is gain by adding new savings (the graph I made does not seem to accurately compare my portfolio to s&p 500 returns). I am also messing up and did not track cost basis for stocks.

Trying to invent this from scratch is driving me nuts and I am not making progress.

 

[burrocrat]

I am looking for spreadsheet template ideas to use to track my monthly finances and retirement goal. Any links to good templates?

I do not want to track my budget, which seems to be 90% of the templates I am finding on google. I am beyond setting up a spreadsheet and tracking how much I spend on dinner out, household cleaning supplies, or a car payment to figure out how much money is left to invest (or figure out what expenses to eliminate to free up money to invest).

Saving money is easy for me. Its the tracking from year to year and finding out if we are on track is the hard part for me. I have enough saved where it is time to get serious about tracking going forward.

The stock investment performance templates I could find seem to all want to get overly fancy with automatic downloads. Comments are that they don't work as links or websites go away. A monthly or quarterly manual update is more my style and it is easy to plug in numbers from monthly or quarterly statements.

I would like to find out my individual investment yearly gain and loss percentages, which add up to a yearly overall return. Then track it from year to year.

A couple of graphs would be nice. Maybe compare my portfolio to the s&p 500 or to an average 7% gain each year.

I could make my own, but I am struggling with how to show gain by investment return and what is gain by adding new savings (the graph I made does not seem to accurately compare my portfolio to s&p 500 returns). I am also messing up and did not track cost basis for stocks.

Trying to invent this from scratch is driving me nuts and I am not making progress.

are you married?

 

[Frixxxx]

Excel spend plan template......should suffice, although not wanting a budget? Scary.

 

[maxdouttsp]

Yes, I am married.

 

[maxdouttsp]

I am not sure what a spend plan template is. When I googled it, I got a personal monthly budget. That is not what I am looking for.

I can see why that may seem scary. This is off topic, but my wife and I have evolved past a written budget. When we were each younger and prior to even meeting, we each had done a detailed budget for several years. It is a very good exercise for people in their early 20's. By writing down every penny, it soon became second nature and both of us made it into a type of "game". Over time, frugality and delayed gratification can become part of the lifestyle you enjoy. We each found a written budget was not really necessary in our 40's. When we got married, we did do a detailed budget for the first six months and found we were in agreement with finances and that continuing to do so was wasting time, time that should now be spent on better tracking of investments.

I max out my TSP and each of our roth ira's for a minimum of savings of $29,000 a year. We have no debt, except for a mortgage. We never got into that trap of what kind of payment can you afford this month or this paycheck. We look at purchases differently than most I guess. I look at if a purchase or habit will fit into my lifestyle/yearly budget. We no longer track expenses daily, weekly, or monthly.

It is not a deprived lifestyle. We live in a nice condo. We have nice cars and clothes. We vacation. We go to the dr and dentist. We eat out. I have cable tv, cell phones and an ipad.

Back on topic. The TSP is easier for me to track. I have the historical monthly and yearly returns for each TSP fund. I have a spreadsheet that shows the contribution limit for each year I participated so far and what my contribution was and what the agency match was. I can subtract out the investment gain as I know my contributions. I can track my allocation and trades. The balance is building nicely.

Maybe it has been just dumb luck, but I am starting to have the potential to earn more in interest than my wife makes in a year. I need to track my other investments in a more organized fashion. I don't want to set up a spreadsheet like a daytrader does. I want something that is monthly/quarterly. I need to pay closer attention to the individual returns of investments in our brokerage, roth, and HSA accounts. I want to pay closer attention to my yearly returns. I need a better way to compare my other investments to the s&p 500 or a set interest rate. I need a better way to visually show progress and if we are on track to our retirement goal.

I am not savy with figuring out some of the complicated formulas or what i should be tracking each month going forward. I could slog away like we have been and we will probably do ok, but I figure if I can get a system going to review my investments, it will make it easier to reach my goal. The sooner I can reach it, the earlier I can retire or increase our lifestyle.

For example, I took our total savings in 2007 and tried to compare our portfolio return to the s&p500 returns. The graph is very pretty and it is the type of visual aid I need to be able to tell if I am on track for retirement, but I know there is a mistake and it must be something to do with the added principle each year rather than only looking at compounding interest. I am not smart enough to figure it out on my own and I had hoped there would be a treasure of templates somewhere that would show me how its done.

I have not figured out what individual returns are for any of our investments besides the TSP.

Help!

 

[burrocrat]

Yes, I am married.

dang.