This week’s Lifestyle Investment involves your pocketbook. Unfortunately, this is a subject that many ladies are hesitant to discuss, yet sometimes it seems like we need to talk about this subject the most. As OPÉStyle mentioned on Twitter the other day:

It’s absolutely true, and happens more often than not –  It’s like Emily Haines sings in Metric’s Handshakes: “Buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this car…”, and in my case, it involved a car to get to work, and a blouse to wear at work, and a pair of shoes to wear at work that I could wear out after, and I soon found myself binge spending.

I’ll be the first to admit that there was a time that I would indulge a shopping binge that left my wallet empty.  In fact, sometimes – even with an empty wallet – I would still indulge a shopping binge, racking up debt and interest to stay fashion forward.  A lot of the pressure to stay fashion forward grew from working retail, but if I’d had a financial plan I would have been able to keep myself clothed for work and continue saving.  It didn’t help that being in such a financial mess left me in a foul mood – and what’s more therapeutic than shopping?  As they say, sh!t happens, and I wouldn’t have learned as much about how to provide for myself had I not experienced that scenario.  At the height of my personal finance crisis, I had $15000 “invested” in a car, $6000 in unsecured debt and a small student loan to tackle.

When I left the retail world, I started looking at ways to pay off mountains of debt I’d accrued in my early twenties, as my interest rates soared.  What some call predatory lending gave me large limits I couldn’t keep up with, and locked me into interest rates to the tune of 31%.  My minimum payments barely covered that cost.  I did a lot of research, and finally decided that credit counseling was the way to go.  I could keep up my payments, but my debt stretched before me for what seemed like eternity.  I continued to research, reading Personal Finance blogs, and stumbled across the best inspiration I found: Fabulously “Broke” in the City.

That’s why I think you should invest your own plan.  As an added bonus, FB is here to emphasize how fantastic her budget tracking sheet is, for creating your own plan for financial fitness.

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Fabulously “Broke”:

Hello! *waves*When I first started trying to get out of debt, I created what would be the first draft of the FB Budgeting Sheet.  (You can read that story here, and specifically, about becoming a recovering shopaholic, here!)I had researched plenty of others online that were suggested to me, namely Mint.com, Pear Budget and MS Money, but each of them posed their own problems.

Mint.com was not good for a paranoid person like me.  If I don’t save or give out my password to all of my banking or investing information online, I am sure as hell not going to let a third party use it.  I am also not willing to provide marketing and analysis data of my transactions and shopping habits to the company for free for any purpose they choose.

Pear Budget and MS Money were good, but too simple. I wanted to track and analyze what I was doing in ways that the sheet and program wouldn’t allow.

And thus, the FB Budgeting Sheet was born!

http://www.fabulouslybroke.com/fb-budgeting-analysis-tool/

It is now in its 4th version, and is the mix of all the great things I liked from all the budgeting sheets I encountered over the past 3 years in its making.  I think it’s pretty much perfect for a beginner or for someone like me who is out of debt but still uses the sheet every single day.

For an example, I posted my 2009 Budget Year End numbers with my December 2009 Budget ending the year.  I find it immensely helpful to track and analyze what I spend during the year, but also if I wanted to look back at old numbers!

Just this morning, BF asked me: “Hey, how much did you spend on that London Fog suitcase last year?”. It took me 2 minutes to pull up my old 2009 spreadsheet, find the month, and give him the exact amount.

The sheet can be re-used over and over again, and I can see how I did from not only month-to-month, but year-to-year, which helps keep me in check.

To celebrate its success for not only myself but for many others, as well as to pay it forward, I am donating ALL the proceeds of the FB Budgeting Sheet this year, to the Make-a-Wish foundation, in celebration of this year’s rebirth.

5 key features of my spreadsheet

1. No need to know any Excel formulas
If you are uncomfortable with Excel sheets, do not fear! No need to know or use formulas. Just enter in numbers and watch the sheet fill in.

2. You can track Income, Budget Categories and Expenses all in one area
No need to flip from one section to another. It’s all sorted by month.

You can enter in all of your paycheques on the sheet (lots of room now), including any side jobs, or extra money you may have earned or have been given.

Then it flows into your Budgeting area, where you set up the categories for the year (I have given you pre-set ones, but also ample room to name your own).

And all of your Daily Expense Tracking is automatically calculated against your Budget Categories, so you can see where you stand in terms of your budget at any given time of the month.

3. You can adjust it however you want, to suit your tastes
I didn’t lock ANYTHING on the sheet. You can change anything you’d like, even the formulas.

4. It comes with lots of pretty graphs and colours
It sounds trite, like I am trying to sell you a pink KitchenAid for Breast Cancer or something, but I found that a great motivator for me to enter in numbers, was to see the results in the pie chart at the end, and to see my yearly spending at the end of the year.

Colours are very important to me, because they help motivate me to open up my “pretty” spreadsheet and have fun entering in expenses and not seeing just black and white.

5. It comes with a lot of built-in calculators
You can calculate your retirement nest egg, based on what you save, how often, at what age and growing at what rate, as well as other quick calculators such as compounding interest.

Sure you can find some of them online, but I don’t like having to go back to these online services and keep re-entering numbers based on what has changed.

So that’s it – My FB Budgeting Sheet in a nutshell.

You can visit the FB Budget page to read some testimonials of people who wrote back after buying the sheet.

Remember, I don’t talk ONLY about money on my blog. I consider myself to be a lifestyle blog with some money talk that won’t bore or intimidate you. For example, I posted my 2010 Budgeting Goals in Pictures, to make it more interesting for myself (and hopefully, for you as well).

If you have any questions, comments or just want to chat, drop by and visit the blog!

I also have all of my Best of FB Posts located here (CLICK!) if you want to get started on reading some basics of how to get out of debt, save money and start your 2010 off right, by achieving financial security.

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FB’s blog really helped me see where my money was going, and the sometimes ridiculous stuff I spent it on.

It’s important to have a financial fitness plan because it lets you invest in yourself and your future while you’re stashing away mad money for vacations, or shoes, or what-have-you.  Fabulously “Broke” has a lot of great information if you’re trying to sort out your own financial plan, or if you want to know how to find your own “balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver“.

I’d like to give a huge “thank you!” to FB for coming out and talking about her budget tracking tool.  Besides writing on personal finance and lifestyle, she maintains an awesome blog about becoming an eco-friendly minimalist, and a fashion-forward site that you should visit too!

Until next time….