Excel Tool for Tracking Your Personal Finance Buffers

Description
George Kao believes that an effective money practice is to create 'buffers' for various savings categories. This excel spreadsheet can help you to track your progress by filling in the table.

The types of buffers included in the table are:
- Taxes
- Child / Pet / Dental / Car Emergency
- Computer Appliances
- Holidays
- Living Expenses
- Retirement
- Charity
- Plus any other category that is deemed important to you.

Step 1: Firstly determine the buffers that matter to you. Delete any buffers on the spreadsheet that do not matter to you. More categories can be added later, but make sure not to add too many.

Step 2: Define how much you want to save for each category. Insert this number in the "Goal Amount" for each buffer.

Step 3: Set aside a certain amount of your monthly income into the Tax Buffer (depending on your tax bracket).

Step 4: Finally, you should save a little towards each buffer so that each month, you transfer whatever amount you can into your Savings. Divide the amount you transfer into however many buffers you have, then add those numbers to the spreadsheet.