Finance Basics - Lesson 4

I will begin this by saying I'm not a financial expert, please consult with a professional for your personal questions and needs.

How was your week?  Mine has been crazy, particularly considering how late this post is.  My apologies for that.

How far did you get with tracking your spending?

Did you find any surprises?

If you still have not done this yet, don't worry, don't stress.  Go through these posts at your own pace, just make sure you are actually progressing.

If you were having trouble getting things listed in one place, I'm linking a little something I cam up with using Google Sheets.

Google Sheets is free to use, however to get the most out of it you will want to create an account (you can still use a previous email, I believe, you don't have to create a new one in order to create a Google account).  This is so you can get full access to the free applications, such as Google Sheets for finances, Google Docs for letters and resumes and Google Slides for any of your slide show needs.  They don't come with all of the bells and whistles of the Microsoft counterparts, however the Docs and Sheets do come with add ons to specialize those apps to what you want out of them.

Spending Log

Continue to fill this out to track your spending.

The next thing to do, in addition to a spending log, is to list your debt.  The first part was a bit painful, but this is the one place where people like me tend to hide from.  Trust me, it won't kill you.

Here are some helps:

Family Finances - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Go to Chapter 8 on page 19 to get an explanation regarding listing your debt, and what order is the best to use.

Another resource is from Oprah's Debt Diet - it's called DOLP.

DOLP


These are some great resources to help you look at your debt, and list it in a way that will help you get successes fast.

I'm going to give you another help, though, and this one stems from a classmate in the Family Finances class that I took.  Their family was paying ALL of their monthly bills on the first of the month - and then ultimately getting hit with overdraft charges.

If you get paid more than once per month, be strategic with your money.  Don't pay everything all at the same time, split it out between paychecks.

The classmate didn't understand this until I handed them a blank calendar template from Excel and had them fill out the calendar for the current month and then write down when they were getting paid and which bills were due when.

Then it hit them.  They could plan for paying their bills with specific paychecks.

That template is what I'll post on here, I've added it to my Google Drive in order to share it.  Perhaps Google will make a template of their own like this for their Google Sheets?  BTW, this can be filled out directly on Google, you'll need to make a copy of it digitally to save it.

Blank Calendar Excel Template

Good luck, deep breaths.

Here is a little inspiration from Oprah: