I assure you're paying too much every month for things you dont even notice!
How it started, how it evolved:
In January I started to think about my financial future. Those thoughts changed my mind forever and turned out to be live-changing decisions. First of all a friend of me contacted me about TradeRepublic (you can check my article here), a online-broker from germany. He's working at a bank, so he had some kind of trust in my eyes. He taught me the basics about stocks and I started investing in ETF's and some stocks. Reading articels, blogs, watching youtube videos and talking to people helped me to stay interested into the topic. Later on cryptocurrencies catched my attention and I began to inform myself. I was always interested in crypto, back since 2017, but other things catched me more these days. Nowadays I'm way more active in cryptocommunitys than others.
Some month ago I began to use an app called FinanzGuru. This app and two excel tables changed my behavior on spending money forever. The app is connected to your bank account and analysis your transactions. Everything is than sorted into categories (like groceries, shopping, streaming) and structured with charts. The app has some other great features aswell:
- forecast of your transactions
- you can see your contracts and even cancel them with the app
- change you electricity or gas contract and save some money
First: overview, second: monthly contracts, third: detailed view
This app gave me a kick in the ass to sort my finances and make an overview. FinanzGuru standalone is great but I found 2 excel tables at youtube which are better for a detailed view of your spending and financial situation. GoogleDrive link here. I translated them to english for you.
the housekeeping book
This may sound old-fashioned but a good economist has a good overview of his finances. With FinanzGuru and the housekeeping book you're one step closer. It helps to organize and reduce costs aswell as asking what's worth spending money on.
all data is fictitious
You can see the advantages of this excel table. Its easy to take control of your deposits and withdraws and the charts visualize it perfectly. I added the last part of the table myself because I split my income 50% living, 20% holidays and 30% savings. You just choose the month and have a look how you distributed your income this month.
the net capital tracker
This document is to have an overview of all your capital. Your house, stocks, cars, debts ... is listed and summarized. Within 10 minutes the table is filled and you have an exact view of your finacial situation. It's pretty nice to know how much money you have, and what unexpected costs would hurt you.
all data is fictitious
As you can see it's a very simple table aswell. You can see the monthly progress at the chart below.
With these 3 tools I was able to save nearly 300€ a month due to old conracts and behaviors I stopped. I took control over my finances and I think this is the first and most important step to be a successful investor.
greeting from germany ntz410
