Downloadable templates
Six templates as CSV and text files: budget check, debt and emergency fund, trading plan, trading journal, broker checklist, and portfolio overview.
Open the CSV files with any spreadsheet program. Print the text files or fill them in with any editor. Nothing gets saved or transmitted.
To get started
Budget check (CSV) — sort three months of bank statements and find your honest savings rate.
Debt and emergency fund (text) — the three points that come before any investing.
For the plan
Written plan (text) — goals, allocation, savings rate, rebalancing, exclusion list, and your sentence for the crisis moment.
Portfolio overview (CSV) — actual and target shares side by side, so you see any drift.
For execution
Broker checklist (text) — authorization, custody, costs, taxes, in that order.
Trading journal (CSV) — with columns for your thesis before entry and whether you followed your own rule.
The trading journal's columns are deliberately chosen to force the separation between process quality and outcome. Alongside entry, stop, and result, they include the reasoning before entry, the falsification criterion, and whether your own rule was followed. Only with these three fields can you later distinguish a good trade with a bad outcome from a rule violation with a good outcome.
The portfolio overview lists actual and target shares side by side, since that immediately shows what rebalancing needs doing. Combined with a goal and time horizon per position, it also makes visible whether money with a short horizon is sitting in volatile assets, the most common structural mistake in portfolios that have grown over time.
The budget check sheet separates fixed, variable, and annual expenses, since the third group is regularly missing from monthly thinking, which systematically inflates the estimated savings rate. The template calls for tracking over three months, since a single month gets heavily distorted by irregular items.
Summary
- Work out the savings rate over three months, don't estimate it.
- In the journal, what counts is whether you followed your own rule.
- Actual and target shares side by side show what needs doing immediately.
Did you get it?
Why does the journal put reasoning and the error criterion before the result?
Because that's the only way to tell good decisions with a bad outcome apart from rule violations with a good outcome.
Why are annual costs tracked divided by twelve?
Because they're otherwise missing from monthly thinking, which inflates the estimated savings rate.
What does the portfolio overview show besides amounts?
Goal and time horizon per position, which reveals short-term money sitting in the wrong place.
Related
- The trading journalStage 2
- What's left at the end of the monthStage −1
- Before you invest a single euroStage −1