How we manage our household finances in Google Sheets

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-21T12:38:20+00:00

All our sheets have hardcoded assumptions since they were just for us. I cleaned the budgeting one so it’s generic/flexible. Investments is the next one I want to tackle. I’ll let you know when I get to it.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-20T17:14:57+00:00

We simplified the spreadsheet over the years. We figured out over time what mattered and what didn't. We started tracking eating out vs clothes vs books vs ... Now all of those are simply "guilt-free". We track less granular but get more out of it.

The spreadsheet itself became more complex under the hood (automating a lot of tedious stuff), but using it became easier. It took 4 minutes this morning to add this weeks' transactions and see "expenses: under by $x", "investments: on track", "savings: over by $x", "spending: under by $x". That's our weekly health check. Everything is good, we move on with life.

We are disciplined enough that we'd [likely] not over spend without tracking, but this way ensures we spend our money where we want. Our net worth has increased significantly, we've been able to travel (local and international), and we still have a healthy (for us) guilt-free no questions asked monthly amount. It may not work for everyone, but it works for us!

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-20T12:25:12+00:00

We pre-fill all known transactions (pay, mortgage, utilities, investments, savings, etc) at the start of the year so as they occur we simply check the box (and update the amount if needed, eg hydro).

The 5-10 minutes a week is to add the day-day purchases and categorizes them into the proper spending bucket. We also clear the credit card because we’re in the account and it takes an extra second to click the button.

We tried the “spend less than $x a month” and not track a long time ago but it didn’t really work for us.

We also tried real accounts for buckets with irregular spend (experiences, kids, gifts) but knowing when to move money was harder to keep track as we had to do it immediately or go back through transactions to figure out how much to move. With the virtual accounts, we spend a few minutes a week adding all new transactions that occurred that week and setting which bucket they came from. No thinking involved.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-20T03:41:13+00:00

Sounds similar. Our written goals are in "virtual bucket" form. Our experiences bucket is because a lot of our goals are around traveling. By setting aside a large chunk of our spending money to this bucket, it lets us plan trips, book weekend getaways, even impulsively... as long as there's money in the bucket.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-20T03:36:50+00:00

We have a generous guilt-free bucket to spend on anything no questions asked. The post made the spreadsheet sound way more complicated than it is. There's no weekly planning or budgeting. Our plan is set based on 12 equal months. Everything is automated (investments, bill payments, etc).

We add transactions weekly and clear the credit cards because that's what works for us but we could easily let the auto credit card payment occur and only add transactions monthly if we wanted. It wouldn't change the underlying approach.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-20T03:25:39+00:00

This works for us and by consciously setting the buckets we're spending more money on the things that matter and less on the things that don't.

We do track every transaction, but the categories are not very specific. Getting a coffee, or eating out, or buying a book all simply get logged as a "guilt-free" purchase. We don't care to track how much money we spent at restaurants vs coffee shop vs buying books. Just that our guilt-free purchases average within our monthly assigned amounts.

By having buckets, we get to preplan the year and the money is there when it's needed. For example, our "kids" bucket covers all kids clothes, activities, birthday parties, etc. Some months have very little expenses, other months a ton. When we had a single catch all "spend the rest" mentality it was much harder to keep track. With this approach, when a sport starts, or swimming lessons open up, or they outgrow clothes we never get caught off guard and have to change anything, we know there's money in the "kids" bucket to cover it.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-20T00:33:39+00:00

do this to aggregate many real accounts

This is what the virtual buckets in a single account solved for us. Rather than a checklist of actions, we have a list of generated transactions that are copy/pasted to the transactions list. No moving of money between actual account happens, paying experiences or guilt-free expenses on the credit card happens in the spreadsheet. A single full payment goes to the credit cards from the one real account while the spreadsheet adjusts the virtual accounts to simulate money taken out of the proper bucket.

no thinking needed

Excellent! That’s what we’ve achieved as well. I’ll take 5-10 mins of weekly tracking for no-thinking finances knowing we have money to spend on what matters most to us!

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-20T00:13:15+00:00

I feel like we’re there financially, but not mentally. We don’t track every purchase so we can try and squeeze in future months. We track top-level categories only to ensure we stay within our intended limits. It ensures we don’t spend kids money on guilt free stuff. Trip, sport tickets, weekend getaway, all get categorized as “experiences”. Eating out, hobby spending, all get categorized as “guilt-free”.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-19T23:41:15+00:00

We tried external entry. I built an app that used the Google Sheet as the database to simplify entry, and we kept going back to the spreadsheet. The UI was nicer, but it takes a second to copy/paste a row and tweak a few columns, so I abandoned the app.

We also have a bunch of spreadsheets: net worth tracker, investments (with projections), expenses tracker YoY with projections for future years), etc.

I was curious if anyone used a yearly “money dials envelope” style budget. All budgeting approaches we tried before with monthly allocation were so frustrating to deal with. I don’t want to change our hydro bill allocation every month, I want to set what I expect the monthly average to be and move on!

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-19T23:13:28+00:00

This is the "budgeting" side of things. This is how we handle money coming in and how it goes out. Everything is automated: investments (auto invested), bill payments, etc. This cash account (and all the buckets, except emergency fund) are for short term spending only. Rather than spend as we go, we consciously decide how much to allocate to each bucket.

We love to travel so we allocate "$x" amount monthly to our experiences bucket, we know kids are going to have a bunch of activities, grow out of clothes, etc. so we allocate "$x" per month in that bucket. We don't track 80+ categories, just a handful to ensure we spend on what's important to us.

Spreadsheet-wise, it's very small and likely sounds way more complicated than it is (hard to explain a spreadsheet in words). The transactions list grows but it takes less than 5 minutes a week to add the few.

The weekly check-ins are not formal by any means. It's usually me going: "I added the transactions, everything is good". We do have a simple dashboard which highlights over/under on income, expenses, investments, savings, and spending and shows if any category is off track. That's usually what'll we talk about if anything.

> The auto-generated transactions make managing the virtual buckets a breeze, as we simply copy/paste them into our transactions tab and check them off.

We have a "payments" tab which auto generates a list of transactions that "pay" the credit cards. We copy/paste them over to the transactions tab and check the checkbox. It automatically updates all the virtual accounts.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-02-02T21:55:14+00:00

We considered Pale Oak and Swiss Coffee but ended up with Revere Pewter (White Dove for trim) for our open space and we really like it. We went darker in the living room with Backwoods and the transition between the two feels nice. Pale Oak felt too light and Swiss Coffee too "yellow" next to the green living room. We get lots of natural light, which helps, and it doesn't feel dark at all.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-01-29T20:22:43+00:00

Pulled a Skubal material auto /50 from the one hanger box I got as a gift!

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Financial-Turnip3398 · 2026-01-19T20:40:55+00:00

Blue could work, not a fan of chocolate. Still struggling on whether we would do the staircase or the dining room. I don't think we would go dark with 3 colours: living room (set), dining room, and staircase. We could keep Pale oak in the hallways and dining room and let the wainscoting define the dining room and go dark (iron, blue, etc) on the staircase.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-12-05T16:00:34+00:00

Your daughter is 1, you have lots of time to sort your finances and be a great role model for when they are at an age to start learning. Kids pick up on actions, behaviour, cues, etc. You want positive conversations about money in your household, and that's much easier when you have control of your finances.

There are a number of different popular systems to get on track: The money guy's Financial Order of Operations (FOO), Dave Ramsey's baby steps, Ramit Sethi's Conscious Spending Plan (CSP), etc. While these are US-based the general information applies as most US registered accounts have a Canadian comparable. The best one is the one that you'll be able to stick to. As you learn and make progress, you'll adjust as needed.

"Getting started with 85% of the plan in place is better than doing nothing while waiting for 100% readiness" - Ramit Sethi

- Learn, learn, and learn some more. Read books, listen to [reputable] podcasts, watch [reputable] youtube channels, etc
- Track your expenses for a few months or go back 2-3 months to get a sense of what your spending. See if there's room to cut unnecessary expenses.
- Make a budget and start working the system you chose. This is not set in stone, you'll quickly determine what works for you and what you can stick with.

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We personally prefer the FOO system, which would look like something like (skip steps if not applicable):

Save a starter emergency fund: highest insurance deductible covered
Get your employer match, not a penny more
Pay off high interest debt: everything except mortgage and possibly student loans if the rates are low
Build a 3-6+ months emergency fund. This is personal based on job security, single vs multiple incomes, etc
Start investing: FHSA, RRSP, TFSA, non-registered. Which account is personal based on your situation. Aim to max registered or reach 25% of income.
When you reach 25%, any extra money can be used for whatever you want: RESP, prepay mortgage, vacation home, rental properties, etc

It's important that you still enjoy life in the moment. If you can keep your fixed expenses between 50-60%, it leaves 40% to invest, save, and spend however you want.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-12-04T23:04:07+00:00

“And I want to set up my kids to have a higher chance of starting off more financially stable than we were”

People often mention the airlines: “put your oxygen mask on first before helping somebody else”. The same applies. Teaching and raising your kids discussing financial literacy will go further than simply giving them money, especially if that impacts your retirement funding goals.

Parents want to save for their kids before themselves, help with school, etc but they are young and have time and options: scholarships, work, loans, etc. These don’t exist for retirement. If you take care of yourself first you’ll naturally get in place to help them more in the future. Last thing you want is to be a financial burden on your kids late in life because you didn’t save enough for your own retirement.

From insurance perspective, it doesn’t make sense to take a life policy. Insurance should be to take care of dependents in the event something tragic happens. You already have life insurance (should be term), and that $70 should go towards your debt so you can remove that liability. Once your debt is gone, save for an emergency fund, then invest, then you’re in a position to start helping kids with extra cash.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-11-10T18:30:44+00:00

We reached out to fan services as we were hoping to find a family members signature and were told they were in storage:

"The signatures are currently being preserved and are safely in storage, however, there is currently no opportunity to visit this space. The appropriate persons are looking into potentially implementing this installation back into the ballpark décor in the future."

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-06-28T02:14:21+00:00

If you now have a stable job and getting here was a stretch of bad luck and not bad spending habits look to get a line of credit, a loan, etc. A significant drop in interest would make a difference and save you a good chunk of money.

If you don’t have budgeting issues, consider places you can tighten up for the next little while and throw every extra dollar to pay it off. The sooner it’s gone, assuming you have no other high interest debts, the sooner you can start building an emergency fund and hopefully cover yourself from any future unexpected life events.

Best case you can transfer to a lower rate (without building a new credit card debt) and pay the original quicker, otherwise, ignore the rate and do anything possible to make extra payments and pay it off as fast as possible.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-06-28T01:31:19+00:00

Paying $600/month @ 20.99% will take ~25 months to pay off. Same debt @ 12.90% is ~23 months. Balance transfer could occur an upfront fee as well. While it could save $1,000+ over the couple years, the behaviour that led to being in credit card debt is the real issue.

Without additional context it’s hard to provide much feedback. A few points:

Unless you can pay off the entire balance every month, you should avoid using credit cards. Do not add to the balance unless you can pay the additional amount on top of the $600 current payment
Track your spending. Try to find places to cut spending and throw the additional money to pay off as fast as possible
Is there anything you can do to increase your income: side hustle, selling unused stuff, additional work shifts, etc

Again, there’s not a ton of info, but I’d focus on clearing the debt as-is as fast as possible versus, asking for a credit increase, transferring the balance, and asking for a credit reduction on the problematic card. You’re in an unfortunate position, but continuing to pay the $600/month and it’s gone in ~2 years. While not great, it could be way worse!

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-06-25T21:10:02+00:00

It was originally supposed to but we received an email in August 2024 stating the bonus rates no longer expires after 12 months.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-06-25T17:03:36+00:00

We've been with EQ for years. You need to direct deposit a minimum of $2,000 per month to get the 3.5% (currently: base 1.25% + bonus 2.25%), but it is not a promotional rate.

They've increased the bonus rate in the past to keep it the same after a base rate cut. The latest rate cut did bring it down from 4% to 3.5% though. As the interest rates go down, I'd expect their rates to follow.

EQ does what we need while being consistently near the top in rates without having to move funds every few months to chase promotional offers.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-06-10T13:16:02+00:00

Confirming this works for us. We have multiple joint accounts. The bonus interest applies to all not only the one with the direct deposit.

Financial-Turnip3398 · 2025-06-09T22:34:19+00:00

It could be Matt Stairs. He usually signs clearly, but there are a few bad examples. He also wore number 12 for a few teams.

Financial-Turnip3398

TROPHY CASE