Being financially organized is critical to being financially responsible. In order to improve you financial situation, you must first have a good understanding and perspective on it. That’s exactly what organizing gets you. As humans, we live in the present. For example, we consciously understand that a $7 lunch at Chipotle won’t break the bank, but what we might not appreciate is that doing that 5 days a week ends up costing around $150 a month. Financial organization would give us that perspective.

I see three critical pieces to the financial organization puzzle: net worth, budgeting, and retirement planning (not necessarily in that order). Here, I’ll talk about how I plan on tracking my net worth.

I used to track my net worth and budget on one super spreadsheet (!!!). But it was cumbersome, complex (and hence not robust), and time consuming. Despite my best efforts, I never actually used it to budget, and quickly stopped even tracking my net worth it. A complete failure. I knew my next effort would have to key on one concept: simplicity.

And so here it is (a fictitious example). Perhaps as simple as it gets, I just list my different accounts and plug in the value once a month. Add a nifty graph if you want. Again, the key here is the quick ease of use. A system so complex that you never use it is worthless. This will give me an easy way to see the trends in all my accounts.

One last point, I tried to loosely categorize my accounts: bank accounts, investments, retirement, other assets (housing, cars, etc.), and debts. This should really be done in whatever fashion fits the user, but for me, I did this to try to keep separate how much I save one month versus fluctuations in the stock market. The retirement grouping gives me a good estimate towards creating my nest egg. If I had a goal to rid myself of all debt, tracking the debt group would provide that. Each grouping has a similarly motivated reason. Give each group an individual line on your plot, and you’re ready track those trends!