Part 8 - Review and Summary

Today we are going to wrap up this series.  I will continue to post articles on different areas of basic finance, but I hope you can use the tools I have provided to enhance your financial perspective.

I am also in the process of becoming a certified Ramsey Financial Coach.  I will be able to offer direct coaching using the methods in this series or general financial coaching for anyone that may need a little 1 on 1 assistance.

All of the documents we built are available along with the step by step on how to build the process; however, I would like to review the summary of what I do every Sunday to stay on top of my personal finances.

1.  Each Sunday I open my financial spreadsheet and I go to my credit card tabs.  I then create a new week (or whatever column I need to).  Then I enter all of the transactions I made for the past week into the spreadsheet.

2.  I then fill out the similar entries for the next credit card and others if they exist.

3.  Once my credit card entries are completed, I then go to my checking account tab.  In my checking account tab I highlight every transaction I see completed green on each of my accounts.

4.  On my checking account tab I make sure I have at least the next 30 days of known transactions created.  This gives me my account balances including income and my expenses, like my mortgage and car payments.  Any of these planned payments are highlighted in Orange since they are expected, but not completed.

5.  I go back to my credit card worksheet.  My week that finished 2 days ago is still recent and I may have a pending transaction that may get adjusted, so I look at the week that finished 9 days ago.  I plan to pay that week off, I enter that as a payment, I add it to my checking account as a planned payment (I use blue).  Once I have all of the payments I want to make, I check my account balances to verify I will not see any balances too low or unexpected.

6.  Once the coast is clear, I then schedule the payments and change them from blue to orange.

I do a few other items on my personal tracking including paying down credit cards, 0% interest loans, car payments, etc.  I also keep overall track of my cash, loans, assets, etc. so I can see their values over time.  These and other topics, I will share in individual posts.

If there is a topic you wish for me to cover, please use the contact form or reply to this posting.  I will try to incorporate it during one of the follow up postings.

Thank you to everyone who has helped make this series happen.

Brian