💸 How I Built a Personal Finance Tracker During a Night Shift (and Accidentally Got My Life Together)

 I didn’t plan to become the guy who builds Excel trackers at 2:47 AM.

But when the office is dead quiet and your brain is buzzing with that subtle anxiety of “where the hell is my money even going?”, you either spiral… or you build.

So I built.

This post is a step-by-step guide to the tracker I use to log, analyze, and emotionally recover from my financial choices. If you’ve got Excel (or Google Sheets) and an ounce of motivation, you can recreate this for yourself.

No fancy apps. No finance bros. Just formulas, honesty, and maybe a little existential dread.

🗂 My Setup: What’s in the Tracker?

The file—PFT.xlsx (Personal Finance Tracker, because I’m creative like that)—has five key sheets:

1. Expenses—where my money vanishes
2. Income—where my money appears (rarely)
3. Goals—where my dreams live in numbers
4. Detailed—where I judge my own patterns
5. Dashboard—where I pretend I have it all figured out

Let’s break it down.

📄 Tracking Expenses (a.k.a. The Reality Check Sheet)

This is where the daily grind hits you in the wallet. I record:

• Timestamp—date and time of expense
• Category—Daily Needs, Personal, Essentials, Savings and Investments, etc.
• Description—“Chai with too much sugar” or “Impulse shoes I’ll return (maybe)”
• Amount Spent—yes, even the ₹12 snacks
• Payment Method—UPI, cash, card, blood pact, whatever

🔁 Automation tip:

I use a Google Form on my phone. It takes 10 seconds to log an expense.
It feels slightly ridiculous… until you look back a month and realize you spent ₹1,800 on post-midnight Maggi and bad decisions.

📈 Income Sheet (Small Victories)

This one’s straightforward:

• Source – Salary, freelance, favors
• Amount – Self-explanatory
• Notes – like “tuition cash” or “karma payout”

Not glamorous, but necessary. It shows me what’s coming in so I can feel less guilty about what’s going out.

🎯 Goals Sheet (Where Hope Lives)

This one’s low-key, my favorite.
Columns include:

• Goal Name—New laptop, trip to the mountains, escape fund
• Target Amount—the dream
• Saved So Far—the reality
• Deadline—self-imposed and already ignored
• Progress %—a formula that sometimes hurts

I even added data bars to show progress. It turns savings into a little game of "can I outsmart myself this month?"

🧠 Detailed View (My Financial Mirror)

This is a combo sheet—a full breakdown of income vs expenses, probably powered by a Pivot Table or some formulas I Googled at 3AM.
It lets me filter by category, month, payment method, and existential regret level.
Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys pretending to be an analyst in their pajamas.

📊 Dashboard (a.k.a. The Performance Review I Actually Respect)

This is where all the data goes to become digestible.

• Total Income This Month
• Total Spent
• Net Savings (if any)
• Pie Chart of Expense Categories
• Line Graph of Daily Spending

I use SUMIFS formulas and slicers to keep things dynamic. One click, and I know exactly where my emotional damage budget went.

💡 Tips That Helped Me Stay Consistent

• Dropdown Menus—So I don’t type “UPI” 17 different ways
• Conditional Formatting—₹500 = yellow, ₹1000 = red, ₹10K = my poor choices screaming at me
• Freeze Panes—Keeps headers visible as I scroll through financial history
• Backups—Because if this file gets deleted, I will cry

🎁 Want to Build One Like Mine?

Here’s the bare minimum you need:

1. An Expenses sheet with categories + dropdowns
2. An Income log
3. A Goals tracker with conditional formatting
4. A Dashboard using simple charts + formulas
5. A little consistency, and a lot of honesty

I’ll probably release a template version of my PFT soon. But honestly? Build your own.

Make it messy. Make it weird. Make it yours.

🧘 Final Thoughts: Tracking = Peace

This tracker hasn’t made me rich.
It’s made me aware. And that’s worth something.

Now, I don’t spend randomly. I spend intentionally.
And every time I log an expense, it’s like saying,

“Yeah, I see you. But I’m in control now.”

If you’ve ever felt like your money disappears faster than your will to socialize—start tracking.

Because peace isn’t found in the paycheck.
It’s found in the knowing.

💬 Want the template? Got questions? Drop a comment or DM. Or just nod silently in approval from your own spreadsheet lair. I’ll feel it.