There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tools (like Mint, Personal Capital, Every Dollar, widely available spreadsheet templates) and calculators (like CalcXML). When I first started my financial journey, I was using Mint to get a good grasp on my budget and cash flow. I found that to use these tools, calculators, or to even calculate simple "rules of thumb" I was jumping between multiple tools and spreadsheets to find it. I asked myself,

IS THERE A BETTER WAY?

So this is my way of seeing these "rules of thumb" or what I call Money Key Performance Indicators or $KPIs.

PRIVACY

This is also for the Privacy Minded. When you use tools like Mint, Personal Capital, or even online calculators like CalcXML, they are all harvesting your data (web traffic, encrypted account logins, etc) . With a Google Sheet, privacy and security is as secure as your Google account, for more information, visit https://myaccount.google.com/security-checkup .