The Personal Balance Sheet

Calling the Shots: How to Be the CEO of Your Own Life

Personal Balance Sheet

Comment: Be sure to see the 2nd link for a sample. (This is not mine ... I would never publish this for the world!). We keep the following documents:

• A running table of our checkbook with cleared items checked. Future items (2 months out) are projected. I update the checkbook registry daily and balance the checkbook monthly
  
• A spreadsheet with upcoming large projects. Eg we have on there some dental work for me in the Spring and some maintenance on my truck (tires and battery) for the Summer. (This is actually a second tab on the checkbook spreadsheet)
  
• A balance sheet. I update this monthly. What I don't include: value of cars, value of furnishings, value of timeshare (which we regard as essentially of zero value).
  
• A yearly tracking of the balance sheet with values as of approximately January 1st.
  
• A house upgrade tracking sheet with a separate tab for major appliances. Like we bought a new washer earlier this year. For the house upgrades, we track past upgrades (like a replaced window or a room painted (with the brand of paint and color code). For future upgrades we have tentative dates for various items like replacement of the bedroom carpet.
  
• We also have a spreadsheet with projected stock purchases. For example I anticipate buying 5 shares of IBM next week. I use Macro*World Investor to track our portfolio. Our brokerage account (Wells Trade) does a super job as well for tracking but I use the other site to augment.
  
• All documents are on a Google shared site that both Kathee and I have access to.