Build a one-page financial plan in 30 minutes

A financial plan is useful when you can understand it, return to it and act on it. A complicated document can make those everyday tasks harder than they need to be.

This version brings the essentials onto one page, with six questions you can revisit each quarter. Set aside about half an hour to make a first draft.

You'll need your last three months of spending data. If you track expenses, that's a two-minute export. If you don't, this is the moment to start — do the rest of this exercise in three months.

The six questions

Write the answers on one physical page or one document. Not a spreadsheet. The constraint is doing real work.

1. What does my life cost per month?

Two numbers, not one:

• Baseline — housing, food, transport, insurance, utilities, debt minimums. The version of your life with nothing optional in it.
• Actual — what you genuinely spent, on average, over the last three months.

The gap between them is your discretionary spending, and it's the number that determines how fast you can react to anything.

Your actual spending may be higher than your baseline. Use your records to measure the difference instead of guessing.

2. What comes in?

Net income per month, averaged over twelve months if it varies. List it by source if there's more than one.

Then: income minus actual spending. That's your real monthly surplus. Write it down even if — especially if — it's negative. A plan built on a number you wish were true isn't a plan.

3. What do I owe?

Every debt, with three columns: balance, interest rate, minimum payment. Sorted by rate, highest first.

Two lines below it:

• Total owed.
• Weighted average rate.

That second number is the hurdle. Any investment returning less than it is, in expectation, worse than paying down the debt. For most people carrying consumer debt at 18–24%, this single line resolves questions they've been agonising over for months.

4. What do I own?

Cash, savings, investments, pension, property equity. Total it.

Assets minus debts is your net worth. Write it down with today's date. This is the only number on the page that matters over a decade, and the only one you should judge progress against.

Do not compare it to anyone else's. Compare it to your own number from last quarter.

5. What am I actually saving for?

Maximum three goals. Each needs an amount, a date and a location.

Emergency fund — €7,200 — by June 2027 — instant-access savings account Deposit — €30,000 — by 2029 — split cash and index fund Replace the car — €8,000 — by 2028 — separate savings account

Three is a limit, not a target. Goals compete for the same surplus, and a list of nine is a list of nine things that will all happen slowly.

The location column is doing real work. Money for next year doesn't belong in equities; money for 2035 doesn't belong in a savings account losing to inflation.

6. What's the order?

The sequencing that works for most people, most of the time:

1. One month of baseline expenses in cash.
2. Any employer pension match — it's an immediate 100% return and skipping it is the most expensive common mistake in personal finance.
3. Debt above roughly 8% interest, highest rate first.
4. Three to six months of baseline in cash.
5. Long-term investing, in tax-advantaged accounts first.
6. Everything else.

Write which step you're on. One step. That's your focus until it's done, and it saves you from spreading a small surplus across six objectives and finishing none.

Keep the first version simple

Resist the urge to add scenario modelling, a retirement projection, or a rebalancing schedule. They're not wrong, they're just not what's limiting you. What's limiting you is knowing your six numbers and doing the next step.

The quarterly re-read

Put a recurring 20-minute appointment in your calendar. Four times a year, open the page and update:

• Net worth, with the date. Keep the old ones — the sequence is the interesting part.
• Actual monthly spending, from the last three months of real data.
• Whether the current step is done.

Then ask one question: is anything different enough to change the plan? New job, new rent, a goal that stopped mattering. Usually the answer is no and you close the document in six minutes. Occasionally it's yes, and catching it in the quarter it happened rather than two years later is the entire value of the ritual.

Why the page beats the spreadsheet

A spreadsheet models the future. A one-page plan documents a decision. The future is unknowable at the resolution the spreadsheet implies, and the decision is the thing you can actually act on.

Twelve quarterly reviews from now you'll have three years of net worth history, a clear record of what you were focused on and when, and — most usefully — evidence about whether your plan survived contact with your actual life. No projection gives you that.