A new financial year in Australia means tax time but also a fresh start. Similar to doing a monthly review, I’ve been doing an annual financial review the last couple of years. Some of the things I consider that you may want to incorporate into your own review:
Last year’s finances
- Review last year’s expenditure
- What was your biggest expense category?
- What do you feel most guilty about spending money on?
- What did you spend money on that made you happy?
- Check your income, spending and savings goals
- Did you achieve all of your goals?
- If you didn’t achieve your goals, are these goals you want to continue next year?
- If you received a bonus at work? How did you spend it?
- What do you want (or need) to learn more about to improve your financial literacy?
- How did your share portfolio performance against your desired return?
- Are there any shares you should sell?
- Which shares are the ‘top 5’ to invest more money into this coming year?
Finances going forward for this year
- If you’re likely to receive a bonus at work, how will you spend it?
- What side hustles (if any) are you going to take up to earn some extra money
- What are your 3 savings goals for this year?
- What books, websites or other resources are you going to use to improve your financial literacy?
Keeping track of your finances
Many years ago I used to keep track of my budgeting on paper using printables I made, but later switched to Excel spreadsheets which I’ve been using ever since. You can read more about why I made the switch in this post. I share more about the spreadsheets I’m currently using later in this post.
Tracking your finances on Paper
If you do want to track your money on paper, I did a roundup of some budget planners to consider in this post: Best planners for budgeting on paper.
My current top picks would be:
1) Printables so you can print just the ones that you need, use them with any binding style you like and if you run out of space, just print some more pages.
Some printables you may want to consider are: paid bills checklist, monthly budget, savings tracker, debt repayment tracker, monthly divider pages for filing receipts, subscriptions and memberships tracker, tax deductions
I know you can track all of these things digitally nowadays but sometimes it nice to see the progress month by month on paper.
If you want to learn how to make your own printables, take a look at some of my ecourses. I’ve tried many different software over the years, my current recommendation is Affinity Publisher.
Read more about my budgeting printables in this post. You can download a copy of this bill checklist from the free printables library.
2) The Happy Planner – if you want the same flexibility as printables but you like the Happy Planner medium page size and don’t want to resize and trim printables to fit, then the Happy Planner budget planner or budget inserts would be my recommendation.
Happy Planner Budget Planner review
3) The Plum Paper Budget Planner – I’ll be sharing a review of this planner in the coming weeks, but I’ve included a sneak peak at some of the pages below – there are very detailed layouts for tracking exactly where your money is going
Plum Paper budget planner
If you don’t need an entirely separate planner for budgeting or want to keep using the paper planner you already have, then of course there are plenty of budget stickers to choose from. My favorite budget stickers are those by the Happy Planner.
See this post for ideas for budgeting on paper: How to color code bill paying in your planner (7 different ways)
Tracking your finances digitally
I know there are plenty of apps and websites you can use to track your finances but most of those are subscription based. When I look at the total cost for a year it’s not worth it to me. I also don’t like that I’m not in control of where the data is stored. What if I need to pull records from a few years ago but I’ve cancelled my subscription? I want complete control over my data and want to keep it stored on my own computer. I also find those websites don’t quite have what I need (there’s always seems to be so many sub-menus to access information), I just prefer to track things in a layout that works for me.
Some of the spreadsheets I use to manage my money include:
Personal finances
Personal budgeting spreadsheets – I use this to track my income and expenses. I prefer to have just one spreadsheet where I can see the entire year at a glance. If I want to drill down into more detail, I’ve got the running totals for each month and sometimes I’ll right click > add comment if there was a big one-off expense e.g. I had to get a new retainer from my orthodontist this month so the amount spent in my health category is higher than usual and I added a comment to remind myself of this
Investment property spreadsheets – I used these when I had an investment property. I sold that property last year and I’m now looking for my first owner occupier home so the loan comparison tab is proving to be useful for my scenario calculations (frustrating how many times I’ve had to update this in the last year with all the interest rate rises!)
Renovation planner – I don’t want to leave the suburb I live in, so to be able to buy in this market, I’m probably going to need to buy a property that requires some minor renovations and cosmetic updates (kitchen, bathroom, flooring etc.), so this spreadsheet has been helpful for running the numbers to see which properties are feasible or not. I can then look at which month/s those big expenditures are likely to occur, and can factor that into my budget to check if it stacks up.
Saving Goals – I have the same 3 savings goal categories every year: property related, investing in the share market and my travel fund. The only difference from year to year is the $ amount I set for each
Share Portfolio – I use these to record all my shares research and analysis, as well as records needed for tax time (dividends, franking credits etc.). I shared more about how I use these spreadsheets in this post.
Business finances
Because I don’t sell physical products, my business’ finances are thankfully quite simple.
Income and expenses – A similar format to my personal budgeting spreadsheets, although each transaction needs to be itemised for my taxes so I record them on the tax deductions spreadsheet (in this same Excel file). I then get the total expenses for that month and transfer it to the annual summary sheet. It makes it easy to do my BAS and to track patterns and see which months from year to year are usually my best, and those that are quiet.
Tax deductions – for obvious reasons! I record these as I go, rather than stockpiling receipts until the end of the financial year. Especially since some companies only do digital receipts now, and because I buy a mix of things in store and online
For all of these spreadsheets I forecast the amounts for each month in red font. Then when I have the actual numbers I turn the font back to grey to match the rest of the spreadsheet.
You can purchase any of these from my shop (click here).
If you want to learn how to make your own spreadsheets, I teach how I make mine in my Excel course.
Some recommended books
This list contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking one of these links I’ll receive a small commission in exchange for referring you (at no extra cost to you).
Note: these are all finance books by Australians, but most of the same principals in the books would apply worldwide.
Barefoot Investor (Scott Pape) – if you hate everything to do with money, have never set up a budget, have just graduated high school or university, are moving out of home for the first time – basically a very beginner book if you want to make an average return on your money with the least amount of work possible, and use the pension to help you retire
Join the Rich Club (Peter Switzer) – I consider this a more advanced (and way better) version of the Barefoot Investor. Good if you have a particular interest in shares, I particularly liked Peter’s Algorithm for Buying Stocks (page 123 of the book). There are plenty of FAQ’s in an easy FAQ / answer format so you don’t have to go digging for it, plenty of case studies & example calculations throughout the book too.
Mindful Money (Canna Campbell) – The author is very down to earth. Unlike some budget books that push for a beans and rice approach, she acknowledges the little splurges and gives budgeting advice that’s more realistic. There is some theory in there if you’re starting to dabble in the share market. She has another book The $1,000 Project if you feel overwhelmed and have trouble reaching savings goals.
Ditch Your Debt and Get Rich (Effie Zahos) – a nicely formatting book ideal if you don’t want to read a lot of theory and prefer to be on a ‘need to know’ basis when it comes to all things money. Despite being published in 2021, this book was hard to find, you may need to visit your local bookstore to get a copy. She has another book: A real girls guide to money (but I haven’t read it).
Money School (Lacy Filipich) – if you’re looking for something more ‘real world,’ I really liked this book as the author actually talked about her experience with money (including real numbers for her investment properties and not just the good parts of owning them). It’s not just full of definitions and over-explaining things like what negative gearing and capital gains are.
Making Money (Noel Whitaker) – A boomer on the cover… How will this be relatable to my Gen Y self? Hmm, I was sceptical initially but this book was pretty good. I like finance books that get straight to the point and include lots of examples and this book did that. This would be a good book if you want to learn theory (but don’t want to listen to your parents bang on about 17% interest rates in the 80’s) and then there’s the case study that applies / provides an example of that theory in the same section of the book, making it easy to understand the concept the author is explaining.
Shareplicity (Danielle Ecuyer) – if you know shares are the investment route you want to go down, this is the book for you. She has another book for picking US stocks too.
Take my Dividend Strategy (Tracey Edwards) – I read the sample of this book then went to the author’s YouTube channel and started watching some of her videos. She’s one of the few Aussie YouTubers that I’ve found that shows a detailed spreadsheet based shares analysis using different criteria. It’s relaxing for me to watch her in fast forward mode when she’s gathering the data. Realistic and practical advice. Note: she openly says in her YouTube videos that her book is basically a regurgitation of stuff she’s said in her videos, just conveniently in one place so maybe only buy the book if you’re time poor.
I prefer to buy the hardcopy versions of finance books so I can add sticky notes on sections I want to refer back to.
I’ve read more than the finance books listed above but a lot of them are long-winded and basic “I knew nothing about money and now look at me, I’m an ‘expert!'” type stories. After a while they start to get a bit same-same – they seem to all talk about the same strategies and the same theory / explanations. And about 90% of the things recommended in each book, were things I was already doing so I haven’t read many finance books lately, I just keep it simple and continue using my existing finance strategies just using more $ as my income grows.
I’m off to set up my spreadsheets, choose my savings goals and ponder all the financial possibilities for the year ahead with a clean, fresh spreadsheet!
More planning tips
- How to choose the right daily planner for you (7 things to consider)
- 15 Productive Things You Can Do In 15 Minutes or Less
- 50 Tips for writing a better to do list that will make you more productive
Liked this post? Pin it!
Leave a Reply