Once you’ve got a handle on your fixed income and expenses, recorded irregular costs for about a month, and jotted down under-year incomes and expenses, it’s time to systematically organize all this information and consolidate it into a table. At this point, the categories from the last post will come in handy.
You can initially draft the table roughly on paper, but it’s advisable to use a spreadsheet program or directly an app right from the start. The most well-known is Microsoft Excel, but there are many other options for creating a table. For instance, Google has the “Sheets” section, a free online spreadsheet software. The cool part? You can use it as an app on your smartphone – flexible and always available.
If you want to record and share your income and expenses with your partner, family, or even across multiple PCs/tablet PCs/smartphones, it’s wise to use an online-available spreadsheet software instead of a locally installed one. Combined with an online document storage (see also Chapter 7), all parties involved will always have full access to the needed information.
Now, it’s time to take control of your finances and embark on this journey together!