Overview
The Cashflow and Networth Analysis Workbook provides detailed insights into your personal finances by analyzing your spending, income, assets, and liabilities over time. It enhances your understanding of your financial health and progress towards financial independence through powerful data visualizations. Designed for both Tiller users and standalone users, this workbook operates without VBA or macros for easy accessibility.
I’ve been developing this workbook since I switched from Mint to Tiller a couple of years ago. It mirrors and builds upon many of Mint’s features and is partially inspired by the approach outlined in one of my favorite personal finance books, ‘Your Money or Your Life.’
Cashflow and Networth Analysis Sheet Map
Installation and Documentation
The Cashflow and Networth Analysis Workbook is hosted on my blog as a downloadable file. It’s built directly upon the Tiller Foundation Template but can also be used independently by importing your financial data manually.
The workbook is for Microsoft Excel for Desktop only. It’s compatible with both Windows and MacOS, though I haven’t extensively tested it on MacOS.
Setup
- Download the workbook from my blog link above.
- Set up the workbook and foundation sheets using Tiller’s Guides.
- Copy-paste any existing transactions, balance history records, categories, or accounts into the foundation sheets. Make sure the source data matches the column layout and formatting of the destination tables.
- Use the Tiller Money Feeds add-on to pull your current transactions and balance data (Tiller Users Only).
- Perform a data refresh.
Initially, the workbook will contain placeholder data, which should be replaced with your actual financial data without deleting the placeholder rows to maintain the workbook’s integrity. See the documentation on my blog for more details.
Usage
Day-to-Day Operations:
- Update your workbook with new transactions and balance history records as they occur.
- Categorize your transactions manually or use Tiller’s auto-categorization features.
- Refresh the data in the workbook to update the dashboards
- Review and analyze your financial data. The typical process I follow after updating the workbook at the end of the month is to:
- Review the Year-to-Date Summary sheet to see my current networth and my income, spending, and savings rate for the past month and the year so far.
- Analyze the prior month’s spending in detail using the Spending Dashboard and intermediate sheets.
- Review the Cashflow and Networth Summary Dashboard to review and reflect on my progress towards financial independence.
- Explore the dashboards to find answers to questions you might have about your finances such as:
- What does my typical monthly spending look like?
- How has my spending on groceries changed over time?
- What was my savings rate last year?
Permissions
This workbook is available for you to copy, use, and modify under the condition that any redistribution of the workbook or its derivatives include a direct acknowledgment of my authorship and a link back to my blog.
Give Me Feedback (Please)
I plan to continually improve this workbook and your feedback will help guide me!
Notes
This template is designed to be robust and user-friendly, but it may require occasional troubleshooting due to the complexities of Excel and the limitations of my approaches. See the Troubleshooting section of the documentation on my blog for tips on resolving common issues.
FAQ
Q: How often should I refresh the data in my workbook?
A: Whenever you make changes to the contents of the foundation sheets (i.e. transactions, balance history, categories, and accounts).
Q: What should I do if I encounter data refresh errors or other issues?
A: Check the troubleshooting section for steps to identify and resolve common issues. If you’re still stuck, feel free to send me an email at jackmansean64@gmail.com or post a comment in this thread and I’ll try my best to help you resolve your issue. Questions and feedback are highly encouraged!
Q: Are you continuing to update the workbook?
A: Yes! Updated versions will be provided in the blog post linked above. See the About sheet in the workbook for a revision history.
Q: Can I integrate your your workbook with my existing workbook?
A: No, or at least not easily. This workbook was not designed as an add-on. It would be easier to use this workbook as a starting point and add other worksheets onto it.