The Cash Flow Tracker

No. You pay once and the Cash Flow Tracker is yours, including future updates. There's no recurring fee and nothing to cancel.

Fair question. There are, and some of them are fine.

Before I built this, I downloaded a stack of the free ones and bought the cheap Etsy ones, and tried to use them. I wanted to know what was already out there.

Here's what I found: most of them just give you a grid. The sheet tracks what you spent but never shows you what it means. They assume you'll figure out the structure yourself, and there's nobody to email if you get stuck. 

So I built the version I wished existed: already sorted into needs, wants, and savings, measured against the 50/30/20 guideline so you can see where you're over and where you have room, and backed by an actual person. Me. I was deliberate about every part of it.

If a free template already has you clear, honestly, use it. But if you've tried a few and they're sitting abandoned in your downloads folder, then you’re who I made this for.

Email Roxy directly at roxy@zaluckyfinancial.com. A real person answers.

No. If you can type a number into a box, you can use this. Every formula is already built. The setup guide and the video walk you through each step, and you'll be up and running in about fifteen minutes.

Both are included. Use whichever you already have open.

Yes. The categories cover Canadian accounts, including RRSP and TFSA contributions, and the currency is yours to set. The 50/30/20 guideline works the same regardless of where you bank.

Yes. Same answer in reverse. 401(k), IRA, Roth: the categories are there, and you can add or rename anything that doesn't match your situation.

The Cash Flow Tracker is available in dollars, pounds, and euros. You pick the version you need at download.

It's a simple, widely used way to balance your money: roughly 50 percent of your after-tax income goes to needs, 30 percent to wants, and 20 percent to savings and debt repayment. Needs are the things you can't skip, like housing, groceries, insurance, and transportation. Wants are the things that make life good, like dining out, travel, and clothes. The last 20 percent builds your future.

The Cash Flow Tracker tracks all three automatically and shows you where your real spending lands against the guideline, so you can see the gap without doing the math.

It's a starting point, not a law. Its strength is that it's simple enough to actually follow, and it gives you a benchmark instead of a vague sense that you should be saving more. If your rent eats 60 percent of your income, the guideline won't shame you, it'll just show you clearly what that means for everything else. That clarity is the point. What you do with it is a strategy conversation.

The apps sell you on automation, but that automation is where they fall apart. They miscategorize constantly. A charge lands in the wrong bucket, or disappears into one you'll never think to check, and when you do finally track it down, fixing it is its own frustrating little project. You end up babysitting the software that was supposed to save you time.

The Cash Flow Tracker works the other way. You enter your own numbers, which takes a few minutes, and in exchange nothing is ever miscategorized, buried, or wrong, because you put it where it goes. That's not a limitation. That's the whole point. Typing it in yourself is how you notice what's happening with your money, and it's how you stay the one in control of the picture instead of the app.

You also own your file instead of storing your financial life on a company's servers, and you pay once instead of roughly a hundred dollars a year, forever.

No, and you can't. That's on purpose. Nothing is linked, nothing syncs, and no third party ever sees your private data.

Most people spend about 15 minutes at the end of the month reviewing where things landed. It's designed to be light enough that you'll actually keep doing it.

Yes. There's room for multiple income sources, including salary, side income, rental income, and anything irregular, and each month is tracked separately so an uneven year still shows a clear pattern over time.

Yes. It's one file, so you can share it or keep it in a shared Drive folder and both work in it.

It won't do it for you, but it will show you the truth clearly, which is where every real change starts. Many people use the Cash Flow Tracker as their first step, then work with Roxy one-on-one when they want a fuller strategy.