Simplifying Your Life with Digital Files – Part 2 – Family Cash Flow

This might be a little difficult to see, so below you’ll find smaller pieces of this to help explain. The Monthly Breakdown tab is where I have itemized our recurring income and expenses.  When I do our Cash Flow (as I showed you above), I use the Monthly Breakdown to plan our upcoming bills and other expenses.

I have a list of our bills and the due dates:

I have a list of our pay days (I get paid every 2 weeks, and my husband gets paid on the 1st and 15th, so it can be a bit difficult to keep up sometimes), and a list of the monthly car insurance and life insurance deductions that are automatically drafted from my account:

I also use this to track our debt payoff.  We only have one major debt, so I keep track of each payment and the remaining balance afterwards.  I know exactly when this will be paid off, and if I want to send more money one month, I can see how it affects our payoff:

Finally on the Monthly Breakdown, I have a snapshot of what our month should look like and how much we have remaining after each pay period:

If spreadsheets are completely foreign to you, and the thought of creating a budget using formulas scares your pants off, have no fear.  Google Drive seriously makes it so easy!  If you have any specific questions, please don’t hesitate to ask and I will do my best to help.  (Heck, it may even turn into another series!)

How do you handle your family’s financials?

Part 1 of this series, the Family Address & Date Book, can be viewed HERE.
Part 3 of this series will show you how I create forms for my website and other purposes.