We’ll start with the easy stuff. Let’s take a look at where you’re at today.
💡 Tip: Have your bank account info, investment account info, and retirement account info handy! It’d also be helpful to know roughly what your income is today.
1. Who are you doing this doc for?
Yourself
Fill out the rest of this document with your own information. For simplicity, we assume that you file taxes as a single individual.
2. How young are you?
00
38
Yes, that's right - you're young!
3. How much 💵 do you roughly have?
These should all be in $ USD. Don't worry, literally no one on this planet has access to the numbers you put in here, including me.
In your bank accounts (savings, checking):
0000000
910000
In your investment accounts (stocks, RSUs, etc) :
0000000
820000
In your retirement accounts (401k, IRAs, etc) :
0000000
550000
4. How much 💵 do you earn per year today?
000000
230000
This is also in $ USD, and represents your total pre-tax annual income that comes from salary, RSUs, side projects, real estate, etc.
Note 1: This does not include long term or short term capital gains from investment accounts. Those will be calculated separately later based on your investment account value.
Note 2: This is pre-tax, and pre-contributions to 401K and/or ESPP/stock plans. Tax is calculated later, as well as 401K contributions. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll treat contributions to ESPP as regular income.
ESPP side note
You should include the discount as regular income, so if your income is $1,000 and you take $100 to use for ESPP with a 15% discount, then actually your ESPP portion is worth $100 * (115%) = $115, and your total income is $1115).
This information is just for you to have as reference, it’s all included in the calculations later on!
that categorize automatically your expenditures after you connect your credit card and bank accounts. Input these expenses into the “Monthly Cost (today)” column below.
*Today : because of abnormal spending habits due to Covid, I recommend you consider “today” expenses from a period of “normal” time i.e before 2020. For example, what I have here are averages from a 4 month period between March and June 2018 when we lived in an apartment in Cupertino, CA.
Important note: Do not include mortgage, rent, or kid related costs here. You’ll have the ability to apply these automatically later on.
Input your expenses now!
Reset all values
Column descriptions
Expense category: you can choose how you want to categorize, just be consistent!
Monthly Cost (today): how much you spend on that category each month, today
Months valid per yr (today): in case there are categories that only apply for part of the year, this column allows you to put in the number of months applicable per year
Example 1
If we only have a pet for 3 months out of the year, for example, we would put the slider at 3 for “Pet Stuff”.
Average Monthly (today): a formula to calculate your average monthly cost
Clarifying notes: any notes that help remind you of assumptions you’ve made