In the previous post we spoke about some general steps you could take towards improving the health of your finances and getting your Financial Workout on the way. Today I'd like to dive a little deeper on Tip Nº 1: Know where you stand.
I have created an Expense Tracker that you can currently download for FREE which should help you start your journey to getting financially fit.
A brief guide on how to use the expense tracker
You'll receive an email with a button/link that will take you to a google docs spreadsheet, the first thing you need to do is open and save the file in Microsoft Excel on a computer. Do not try to open it on your phone.
The next thing you will need is to download your bank statements. You can start by obtaining just last month's data, the last 3 months or the year to date transactions (so if it is May that would be from January to May). I however would recommend you start by getting the transactions of the last full year given we are in 2020, that would be of 2019. That would be a great place to start because it would give you a sense of understanding about your spending habits and immediately point out areas you could improve upon. It would also allow you to have something to track yourself against.
Finally once you have both the Expense tracker spreadsheet saved to your computer and you've downloaded some history of your bank statements to help you get to grips with the detail of how to use each tab, you'll be ready to get started. I would then recommend you have a look at this video which will guide you step by step of exactly what you need to do within the spreadsheet.