Did you know the average American has five bank accounts and four credit cards? Once you factor in mortgages, retirement accounts, and car loans, you can easily find yourself swimming in financial accounts. How does someone keep track of all of these?
One great way to track your financial life is through spreadsheets. But if you’ve ever sat down and tried to build a spreadsheet, you know that it can easily eat up your time. Fortunately, Tiller Money has created a spreadsheet you can use to track all of your accounts and transactions in one place. Check out our review of Tiller Money to learn if this customizable personal finance spreadsheet is what you need.
Tiller Money Setup Process
Getting going with Tiller Money is a straightforward process. In fact, the company has made signing into the service simple by allowing you to sign-in with your Google account.
Once you sign-in to Tiller Money for the first time, you’ll have to begin providing login information for your financial accounts. They take your privacy seriously and use bank-grade 256-bit encryption to keep your data private.
One great thing to keep in mind about the spreadsheet is that you have the option of using it with either Microsoft Excel or Google Docs.
Tiller Money Features
Insights
Think of the Insights page as a snapshot of your overall finances. You can see your largest inflows and outflows for your bank accounts with a quick glance. What’s really great is that Tiller Money compares your assets and liabilities to give you your current net worth.
Transactions
When you think about it, it’s a complete waste of time to have to login to each bank and credit card that you have. Tiller’s spreadsheet removes that burden by compiling all of your transactions into an easy-to-read Transactions page.
On the page, you can see important details for each transaction, including the date, description, and amount. You can then customize the spreadsheet by categorizing each transaction so that you know exactly where your money’s going.
Categories
Some personal finance services limit you to their pre-determined categories for income and expenses. That’s not the case with Tiller Money. While the spreadsheet already comes with useful categories, like mortgage, restaurants, and utilities, the Categories page allows you to create as many categories as you’d like. It truly makes managing your personal finances a custom experience!
The Categories page takes it once step further by summarizing the total of each category for each month of the year. It makes the process of seeing where your money’s coming from and going effortless.
Monthly Budget
Most of us don’t enjoy the process of sitting down and creating a budget. But with how simple Tiller’s Monthly Budget page makes it, there’s really no excuse!
On the monthly page, you’ll see all of the categories you’ve created so far. Simply choose the month you’d like work on and then budget an amount for each category.
As you categorize your transactions on the Transactions page, the spreadsheet will compile the actual amount you have used in that category so far. The last column subtracts the amount you’ve budgeted from the actual transactions so far to give you the amount left in that category for the month. This feature allows you to simply see how you’ve managed your money for the month and make better choices in how you spend your money.
Tiller Money Labs
While the main spreadsheet is a great start to taking control of your money, Tiller Money also offers a wide array of other highly useful spreadsheets.
For example, if you’re self-employed, there’s a spreadsheet that will help you estimate your quarterly tax payments to the IRS. If you’re drowning in debt, you can give the debt snowball spreadsheet a try to start seeing those loan balances decrease. There’s even a spreadsheet to help you plan for holiday gifts!
Webinars
So you’ve bought into the idea of Tiller Money’s spreadsheet, but now you really want to take it to the max? Well fortunately they offer Weekly Webinars that you can join. They’ll give you the tools necessary to customize your experience. They even open up the last portion of the webinar for questions and answers.
Tiller Money Pros
Customization
We all come from different backgrounds and live in different circumstances. Many personal finance tools take a “one size fits all” approach. Tiller Money actually allows you to discover what works for you and then implement it.
Privacy And Security
Some companies treat your data as if it’s their own property. But Tiller Money takes the opposite approach. They believe your data belongs to you!
Between their bank-grade encryption and two-factor authentication, you can rest easy knowing that your information is safe. Tiller Money never sells data and should you choose to delete your account, they will completely wipe all of your data from their servers after 90 days.
Automatic Updates
It’s true that you could build your own spreadsheet. What your spreadsheet can’t do, however, is automatically update itself. Tiller’s spreadsheet automatically imports your transactions every day. Gone are the days of menial data entry.
Tiller Money Cons
Cost
Unfortunately, there’s a price to pay for Tiller Money’s services. Their subscription has a flat rate of $79 per year. While there’s no free version, Tiller Money does offer a 30-day free trial for their services.
Integration
Tiller Money’s spreadsheet shouldn’t have an issue integrating with most big banks and financial companies. However, you may find that data from smaller companies simply isn’t compatible with Tiller Money’s platform.
Conclusions For Tiller Money
Keeping track of money is something we all have to do, but don’t necessarily enjoy. So why not spend as little time as you need to be doing it? With the automatic and customizable nature of Tiller Money, you can keep track of every penny and leave your time to be spent on the things you truly enjoy. Looking for other ways to keep your finances in order? Check out our guide to the best money management apps. All that’s left to do now is go and get your finances organized!
