This Tool Helped me Save Hundreds of Dollars Every Month

And even helped me earn extra money!

Michiel Schuer

5 min readApr 4, 2024

One of the basics of getting financially independent is to be able to manage your finances correctly.

You need to keep track of your financial inflow and outflow — what comes in and what goes out.
You need to analyse these flows to make informed decisions that align with your financial goals.
You need to be able to track your progress: “How close am I from achieving my goals?”
You need to understand your spending: Distinguish between stuff you WANT and stuff you NEED.
You need to learn to allocate resources more efficiently towards your goals.
You need to learn to invest wisely. Grow your wealth by investing in opportunities that offer good returns.

Basically there’s so much you need.

In the past…

In the past, I was always “freewheeling” this.

“Ah, I’ll see when that bill comes”.
“I’ll find a way”.
“I don’t need to save money”
“I’m sure I’ll achieve my goals, no need to track them”
“I still have enough time until the end of the year, it’s only April… 8 months left”

Spoiler alert: I didn’t accomplish any of my goals.

I mean, I did put some effort into them, but in the end I just didn’t have enough time because I was always postponing & finding excuses.

But then… in 2023, I started to take things seriously.

I set myself a bunch of financial goals. And of course, these goals had to be tracked. I needed a tracker.

Of course I could just buy one online, but meh.. I’m a cheap bastard. So I decided to create one myself. And that’s how my “Microsoft Excel Financial Tracker” was born.

But this week, I created a Google Sheets version of it!

I Created a Financial Goal & Expense Tracker in Google Sheets!

And boy, I am so proud of it!

So yes, I’m promoting it in this post, because it’s so d*mn cool! ;)

I’ll quickly run you through on how it works!

Step 1: Transactions Sheet

This is the basis of your file.

You simply add your income & expenses, just like in the example above.

E.g. today, I renewed my ChatGPT subscription, so I would add:

3 April 2024 — Renewed ChatGPT Subscription — Subscriptions — $19 — NEED

Note that for ME, ChatGPT is a Need, because I use it for my daily work. But for you this might be “a want”. It’s your own decision.

I chose the Category “Subscriptions”, but you can of course categorize it however you want.

Once you’ve started filling in your transactions, you’ll notice that the Overview Tab will start populating.

Step 2: Analyze the Overview Page

The Overview page gives you a clear overview of:

Monthly & Year income
Monthly & Year expenses
Income & expenses per category
Wants vs Needs
Easy to understand graphs
….

If you scroll down, there’s some more graphs.

Step 3: Income Tracker

One of the key concepts to financial freedom is setting yourself some financial goals.

How much do you want to earn this year?

Or how much do you want to earn in 5 years?

Or perhaps there are some other goals that you have? Whatever the case, you can use the income tracker to track your income goals over the coming year.

Simply set the desired amount, and the sheet will automatically calculate how much you’ll need to earn every month to achieve this goal.

In case you don’t achieve the goal, it will recalculate automatically — you’ll have to do a little better your best the next month!

Step 4: Savings Goal

If you have an income goal, you also need a savings goal.

Or maybe you want to pay off some debt? Or you’re saving to buy a car? Or a house?

Whatever it is, use the “Savings Goal Tracker”! The concept is the same as the “Income Goal Tracker”.

Analyse and improve!

If you’ve entered your data for the month, you can now analyse everything:

How much money did I spend on things I “wanted”, rather than stuff that I really needed?
How close am I to achieving my financials goals?
Where does most of my money flows to each month?
What are my biggest costs, and can I decrease them?
Where does all my money come from, and can I increase it?

You know what they say:

“To measure is to know.”

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it — and most importantly: You can do something about it!

So stop “freewheeling”, like I did — wasting many years with it — and get your own Financial Tracker Spreadsheet now:

→ https://michielschuer.com/tracker ( $2 )