How should I treat non permanent expenses such as childcare, alimony, child support? daycare, and uh.. ahem *car payment* I know, I know!) What category would a Health Savings Account (HSA) be covered in the spreadsheet? obviously i rarely use excel. I believe my message wasn’t read by an actual person but probably by a robot! Is there a xlsx version? Basically, since it is pulling the most recent net worth balance, if you’ve pulled your formulas over to a new month w/no data and have a zero in your net worth row, the Starting Balance will pull over the zero balance. It is particularly important to the wholesale and retail, hospitality, and public administration and health sectors, which employ around 1.5 million non-UK nationals. Does it make sense in that case to think of the FSA accounts in that case as additional check/savings accounts and to keep track of the balance on the balances tab? Even if you sell the house, you probably need that money to buy a new one. Did you ever get an answer to this? Assuming around 2% average inflation over the same time, I’m considering an update to my model to use 6% instead. 2) Treat it just like the primary residence. taxable, tax-deferred, etc.) what does it mean on the averages tab if the required drawdown is a negative number, as in -5%? Is it down or can I get the spreadsheet from another location? There’s some good work in it! The spreadsheet is a valuable tool for those with the discipline to use it and apply it. Our plan is to backfill the initial drawdown (to make our transition whole again over four years) and begin improving our sustainable budget significantly thereafter. I personally think the second option is easier so that’s what I recommend. See my latest comment for this fix as well as others. I am unable to download the spreadsheet. b) Include all the other expenses such as property tax, insurance, maintenance etc in appropriate expenses categories Question about retirement years and % probability of death. I am learning a great deal as I am on the path to becoming FI myself. Do you include your 401k contributions in your after tax income? How do you account for one-off purchases and things that you actually spent money on, but realistically do not need to be amortized for FI calculations? So is there a rule of thumb for what the mix needs to be at a minimum to be FI so you don’t run out of the Before pile before you can tap the After one? I’m seeking clarity since the line is “after-tax salary” so I was only inputting my take home. The numbers should be the same from the sheets yes? I have just started creating the spreadsheet and have a question: In the spreadsheet how should one account for mortgage on a rental property? You will also need to add a new row to the Net Worth tab under the Liabilities section which pulls in the sum of the student loans from the Balances tab. Hi, are therr any products available in the UK that you’d recommend? One slightly off topic comment. Thanks! What a great problem to Have! How do I account for a pension and social security in the spreadsheet? My wife and I have about $60K of student loans. Again on the Averages tab, where it says: Required Drawdown (goal is 4% or <), my number there is always this: #DIV/0! I do have a quick comment and two questions though. Is there a solution or am I doing something wrong? I actually add a line for every savings goal we’re striving towards (i.e. The actual travel expenses on the Averages tab. For the “Averages” tab I can think of 2 ways: 1) a) Do not include the mortgage payment in expenses section I just discovered your tool and it is a great improvement over the spreadsheet I’ve been using…Thank you! I have been digging into the spreadsheet over the last few days, getting it setup for myself. You need to calculate the overall percentages by using the same formula you use for monthly percentages, except you need to fill in total dollars instead of monthly dollars. Luckily, this step is easy because Personal Capital* aggregates all of your accounts for you. Here’s a list of what I changed. So far feels good just bothered by having to quarantine . It’s fantastic. Just change the formula for the Starting Balance to those accounts you want included to get a more accurate look at your situation. I did a search for problems with “Starting Balance” on the FI tab, and found nothing so I am creating a new comment. Same thing for the average income box, ###### but in bold! Thanks for such a valuable tool to evaluate current position and path to FI. Hi! About to try it out this week. I even did my own spreadsheet but not as complete and thorough like this one. -Tony. In the home tab on the ribbon, under the “Cells” section, click on the “Insert” button (click on the section with the “insert” text, not the top half with the little picture), then click on “Insert Sheet Rows”. US expats in the Azores. Here is the formula: I’ve been using this spreadsheet for a few months now and am pretty excited about it. Thanks. Hey Dan, thanks for the suggestion. Or is it a total contributed annually, up to that point (ex. I am curious to know your thoughts about these life planning approaches. Alternatively I could spread the one off wage bonus over the whole year in monthly amounts. I am listening to all your past and current interviews and I will be up to date soon. Is there any way to contact you for more information on how to understand this form fully? Thanks for the spreadsheet — it’s really helpful! I currently do not have a home, or a mortgage, however we’re planning on purchasing a home, and taking on a mortgage, in the near future. 3. Hi – I downloaded the sheet multiple times and I was told the file is corrupted. thanks for your help! I likely will transfer a portion to whole life eventually. I basically follow the investing guidance laid out in Jim Collins’ Stock Series, so I expect to earn about 8% on average, but that’s before inflation. I checked and I had the same problem on the original spreadsheet too. Includes categories for a single person budgeting needs. How/where can this be incorporated into the spreadsheet? harder to get at, like money in your 401(k)). I have some non permanent expenses right now Can someone advise? Would those totals be placed on the investment tabs of the FI spreadsheet? My wife and I are very close to FI! Thank you!! I had the same issue w/getting a $0 in the starting balance until Kenny’s comment below helped me see my error. I find it really useful. For HSA you should enter the amount of health expenses for the month that can be used later for doing penalty-free/tax-free withdrawals, e.g. Thank you again. Thank you for correction at Mad FI. For instance, I have a ROTH IRA where the contributions would be considered tax-free, but the earnings on those contributions would be tax-deferred. ), which is really useful when making big lifestyle decisions. No, Jared is wrong, the spreadsheet does subtract your home equity from the starting balance. I was considering creating something similar…you saved me quite some time. What am I missing? Are these today’s numbers as to how much I make ? No bueno if you want to paste into the FI workbook and have the balances automatically linked to the “Balances” tab. I’m using a few year old and personally modified version of Brandon’s spreadsheet. Thank you for putting it together and making it public. In Mint’s Overview tab, simply click and drag over the Accounts column to the left and highlight down through all of your accounts. At finally on FI tab, under “year till FI” I get some zeros and others negative numbers like -0.12. Hello! Any pros or cons of either approach? My question is how do we calculate income after tax, is it after 401k and HSA witdrawals or before? MF – so you can get an idea of how your money will be taxed when you eventually withdraw it. This way on the Investments side you can select the appropriate drop down and it will grab the correct value from the Balances sheet. That doesn’t seem right. However, once we purchase the car, the lump sum will be disappear from the spreadsheet. If my starting balance is based on my net worth, which is based on the same of my assets including my house, does that mean my withdrawal rate is somehow withdrawing money from the value of/equity in my house? The introduction of a standard method in 2018 intended to shift time, resources and debate at examination away from the ‘numbers’ question and towards the ‘how’ and ‘where’ of building new homes. I trained as an accountant but I couldn’t have come up with what you’ve shared with us. – I modified the spreadsheet to include my college savings accounts for visibility purposes only. If so, anyone know how to address this to get a more correct estimate of your FI number? Thank you for sharing!. Then I add the monthly savings to my after-tax salary + supplemental income to come up with my monthly Income. The Investments tab also automatically computes your asset allocation so you can use this sheet for portfolio rebalancing. Do you know anyone in Canada that has done something similar? Job well done. on that note, what’s a good number to shoot for. Duh! For things like property tax, car insurance, home insurance, etc., these are amounts you might pay only twice a month, depending on how you have them set up (same goes for any purchases that you don’t make on a monthly basis). See the post on Safe Withdrawal Rate (http://www.madfientist.com/safe-withdrawal-rate/). The easiest fix is to right click at the top of the column, select Column Width from the menu, put in a larger number like 15. We will take a closer look at the spreadsheet. Increase your income and/or lower your expenses to decrease your “Years to FI” number and walk away from your job even sooner! If all of your assets are in After Retirement Age accounts, you can’t be FI until after the age of 59.5 without serious penalties and taxes, right? Now I know what you mean by Mad Fientist. c) Include only the net income in the “Supplemental Income” row. One, calculate what the monthly cost of these expenses would be and enter those in the monthly columns. Just curious about your thoughts on this. One thing I’m a little confused about though is why you’re calculating the savings rate the way you are (and I get that it’s ultimately an individual choice). Do you have any suggestions on how to better factor these things into my fi. I put all my numbers in and modified it a bit to work better for me and was shocked to see it says just a little over 5 years until FI! All I am doing is entering current account values (pre-tax) for my investments. Yours are very simple but seem to exclude certain key expenses like clothing, unless you lump those under shopping/misc. Aside from taking out a HELOC, those funds can’t really be tapped into as part of the withdrawal in retirement. I probably should have put a minimum of 0, since negative time-to-FI numbers don’t make sense anyway. I’m new to excel spreadsheets but have been learning from the formulas you have setup and put in extra rows for additional categories etc…. This is one of my fears of early retirement is that i’m going to have to pay for a lot more things, insurance, dental, phone, food ect. The last thing, I’ve considered, but am not sure if its allowed, is to use the majority of funds from the sale of our house (we intend to travel for 2 years) to fund an IRA (Non-Deductible, as the funds from the sale, would be tax free). Some of those formulas you have on the FI sheet I would not have been able to come up with!! Thanks for all your good posts and podcasts! Let me know if you have any other questions and thanks for reading! Also in editing the names of some of your balances for instance i use vanguard 401k not fidelity and don’t have some of the things listed. Average Necessary Coverage, Discretionary Coverage and Total Coverage are calculated by averaging the percentage of each month’s money in their respective category. Increasing the rate will increase the amount you need in your portfolio before you can be FI. you could access immediately) vs. illiquid (i.e. Do you mean, forever? Regarding married couples. I’m going to send him an email about it…. I’ve been planning for our (semi) retirement (more appropo term is “Financial Independence”) and I’ve (just) started something similar. My discretionary coverage is usually also always 0% but I rarely have supplementary income so that makes sense. I’m not sure how this will all work out. We have also considered a series of ladder conversions from IRA to Roth. I think what would be ideal would be if there was a way in which to see how long a single large purchase would add to FI, which could be useful for determining whether to make a purchase or not.