Conclusions and Recommendations
Now you have transcribed all of your pertinent information into a report, and you could simply say, “I am done” and hand this to your spouse, but, I have learned that if you do not put your opinion and conclusions into this report, your spouse or whoever reads this report won’t really understand what you think about your current financial situations.
You now have down on paper how much you make a month and how much you spend a month, this in itself is invaluable information to have. This in itself is the core of this report, you now know whether your income is larger than your output. If your report shows you make more than you spend, yet you continue to go into debt, you are not being honest with yourself and you need to revisit your income and/or debt reports (this report is simply paper if you are not being honest).
You need to add a section in your conclusions section about what your plans are for the coming quarter. Doesn’t have to be a long plan maybe just a one liner like, “Stop Using Credit Cards”, or “Pay off Credit Card Debt”, that is fine.
I call my summary or conclusion section as Truths, where I am brutally honest about the mistakes we (mostly I, but we) have made this quarter or in the past while that we have not talked about. My wife reads this, I’m not sure she likes it, but we do end up talking about something we don’t usually talk about. Will this work for you? I have no idea, I offer it as an idea.
For those of you who want to try this out a Powerpoint template of the Big Cajun Man Quarterly Financial Report Template is available here.
Related Posts
- Personal Finance: The Quarterly Status Report
- Personal Finance: The Quarterly Status Report (How)
- Personal Finance: The Quarterly Status Report (What Assets)
- The Quarterly Status Report (What Debts)
- Personal Finance: The Quarterly Status Report (Last Parts)
- Personal Finance: The Quarterly Status Report Wrap Up
I have done reports for my wife previously but she is much better off with the data I have entered in Quicken XG 2007 under the Emergency Records Locator found under the Property and Debts tab.
This has allowed me to detail all the things that need to be known when I am sick, become senile and finally die. The reports include Emergency, Caretaker and Survivor and each includes an appropriate subset of the data.
crg
Good for you two if you can actually discuss finances. In most marriages I have noticed that there is usually one spender and one saver. I guess opposites do attract!
Best Wishes,
Dividends4Life
Thanks for sharing the template! I’ll be filling it out this weekend!
Fight is a relative statement of course…
Assuming I live through this latest thrashing, stay tuned for more personal finance updates.
–C8j
The Big Cajun Wife says “Bring it on” let the fight begin.
Love me