Creating A Plan And Seeing The Future

Seeing the future? Come on Thrifty Maven, you are starting to sound a little crazy.  I don’t mean literally seeing the future, I mean creating a sort of cash projection spreadsheet so that at any given moment you can see how much money you will have in your bank account in one week, two weeks, three weeks and so on.  I began using a spreadsheet to help guide my finances about eight years ago when I was still in college and trying to find a way to pay my tuition.  It has helped me tremendously through the years. 

The spreadsheet I created is basically an excel document that is dated across the top and on the left hand side has categories.  The top categories are income categories and the middle categories are expense categories and the categories at the bottom are savings categories.  You can divide the categories by color or by simple lines.  The screenshot below is an example of how I set up my spreadsheet.  

The beauty of setting up your own spreadsheet rather than using an online budgeting tool is that everything is 100% customizable.  I’ve found with a lot of budgeting tools, you have to lump in a lot of your expenses into one broad category.  I like to see exactly where I’m spending my money so a custom spreadsheet works best for me.   Feel free to play around with the categories adding and deleting as you go until you find what works for you. 

One of the main benefits of a creating your own spreadsheet is the ability to put in all your incomes and expenses that you know will be coming up in the future.  This allows you to plan what you can afford based on current and future income/expenses.  For example, I want to make a $100 purchase tomorrow.  If I already know that I have a big electric bill coming up in two weeks and that expense is already entered in my spreadsheet on the date it will get paid, I will easily see if my current $100 purchase will affect my ability to pay that electric bill.

Another advantage of making a cash projection spreadsheet is the ability to see how much you’ve spent in a particular category during any given time frame.  You can easily see if you’ve spent too much on groceries, going out to eat, clothes, etc. 

Once you create you spreadsheet, play around with!  Don’t be afraid to add and subtract categories as you go.  It will take some time to get your spreadsheet where you want it, but it will be well worth it in the end.  There are endless possibilities!


Thanks for reading!