Tracking Finances with Excel Spreadsheets

Now that I have gotten very serious about debt reduction, I am constantly making or updating Excel spreadsheets.  I have one that shows every bill for the month sorted by the due date.  I have the columns labeled: Date, Who Owed, Amount Due, Amount Left To Pay, Comments,  and then the dates of the 4 paydays I will use to pay those bills.

I highlight the cells in green when they have been paid.  I highlight them in yellow when I have the payment pending, such as if I schedule an online payment several days in advance.  When we completely pay off a debt I highlight it in bright red so it stands out!

Once I have all the month’s bills listed I try to list it under the paycheck I want to use to pay that bill.  My goal is to have between $350 and $400 each week going toward bills, so at the bottom of each week’s column I have the total amount committed for that week.

I have another spreadsheet that lists all my debts that make up my debt snowball listed in the order I want to pay them off.  Beside each debt is the balance that they had when I started tracking them and then several columns with the updated balance for each month of the year.  I look at this page when I want to see how much total debt I have left to pay off.

I have a third spreadsheet that only tracks the interest I pay.  Every time I receive a bill from an account that charges interest, I open this spreadsheet and add the charge to the proper column.  I have columns that add up how much less interest I paid this month compared to last month and how much less I’m paying compared to December when I started the spreadsheet.

I wish I had started these spreadsheets years ago.  I am so much more organized now than I was before.  I tend to open them every night even if I haven’t got anything to update on them.  Just looking at them everyday, helps me stay focused on the goals I have and reminds me what bills are coming up soon.