Money Smart provides worksheets to help you put its advice into action. Here you will find those worksheets to use each month, or as indicated, depending on the worksheet. You can fill them in and let them do the calculations for you. You can then print or save them for your records.

Available Worksheets:

Sample forms and extensive discussions of all the entry fields and categories are provided in Money Smart; however you can find basic directions here along with each worksheet.

This worksheet is the foundation of your Spending and Saving Plan. Do a new worksheet for each month and save them for reference as you go forward. Create your plan by taking your available net (after tax) monthly income and allocate it in whatever way you choose. If your income varies quite a bit from month to month, use 1/12th of your estimated annual income for your monthly figure.

The spending categories should capture all of your spending, so do your best to fit your expenses into one of the categories or add another as needed. At times you may find that it is hard to estimate what you spend on a particular item. In this case, make your best guess and then adjust your plan the following month when you know the actual cost.

Fill in the estimated amounts for your income and for each of the spending and saving categories. When you add up your numbers you will probably find your first estimate of spending plus saving does not match your income. Go back and adjust as you see fit to get the numbers to match.

After the month is over, post your actual numbers to the worksheet. Tracking your spending at the end of the month will not be difficult if you use a debit card and keep receipts for cash purchases and purchases with items that fall in multiple categories.

Think about what happened and then create the next month’s worksheet using what you learned to further fine-tune the numbers. Do not fall into the trap of thinking this is too much work. It’s only an hour or two a month, and if you do not do it you will have broken Money Rule #4: Have a Written Plan and Follow It, and are at a disadvantage in managing your money.

A number of the categories on your Spending and Saving Plan involve saving a monthly amount for expenses that occur on an “as-needed” basis. The Rollover Saving-Funds Worksheet will help you track the money you have saved and made available for each of those “non-monthly” categories. Be sure to reliably save the money required and use this form—a lot of your spending and saving categories involve this situation.

Each category for which you are putting away money should be considered its own savings fund. The Rollover Saving-Funds Worksheet gives you a place to track these funds. For the first month you start, decide how much of your current savings to use as a starting balance for each of the saving categories on the worksheet. Write these amounts down on a separate sheet of paper.

At the end of each month, transfer the amounts to be added to or subtracted from your Spending and Saving Plan Worksheet to the Rollover Saving-Funds Worksheet. Be sure to enter these numbers with either a plus (+) or minus (-) symbol. Then add or subtract these amounts from the previous month’s fund balance which will give you a new balance to enter into the Fund Balance column. There is also a column for you to identify which of your financial accounts each fund is in. For each of your financial accounts, there is an area for recording transfers and rollover balances.

Your net worth is the difference between what you own and what you owe. Filling in all of your accounts on this form every three or four months will give you a clear picture of your financial progress.

This worksheet provides a place to gather and track the information you will need to make the best use of our online Retirement Calculator and create your plan. Instructions for filling in the various fields are available on the calculator screen.

For simplicity’s sake I have used the word retirement rather than retirement/financial freedom in my explanations. Do not let that mislead you. As explained in chapter two, “Your Goals and Dreams,” financial freedom, not retirement, should be the goal for most people.