About once a year, I tally up our investments to see how much we’re contributing and if it’s enough to reach our retirement goals. All of the numbers usually end up scribbled on a sheet of paper and when I look at it a few hours later to show my husband, I can’t figure out what the numbers mean.

“But we’re saving enough,” I’ll say as he looks at me skeptically. And then I have to walk him through each number to make sure not only that he understands my scribbles, but also to assure myself that I got them right in the first place.

To help remedy this problem, I created an Investment Contribution Inventory worksheet that helped me break down our investments, and I wanted to share it with you!

It took a few tries, but I think this one works pretty well. If you use it and think of a way to tweak it and make it better, please let me know!

At the top is a place for you to enter your Total Household Income and multiply it by the % Savings Goal. That number equals your Total Investment Goal.

Easy enough.

From there, you can list all of your investment accounts in the Investment Location column and how much you contribute to them each month in the Amount Invested per Month column. If an investment gets taken out of multiple paychecks over the course of the month, make sure to put the total in this column.

The third column multiplies the monthly amount times 12 months per year. If you have investment amounts that aren’t taken out monthly but you want to include, then this number can be the number of times you make that contribution. For instance, if you invest a portion of your tax return once a year, than you would only multiply that amount by 1.

The next step is to multiply the Amount Invested per Month times the Number of Months per Year to get the Yearly Investment for that particular account. I realize that it may seem redundant to multiply the monthly contribution by the number of months, but the visual really helped me keep track of the numbers.

At the bottom of the table, there is a place to add up your total Amount Invested per Month and the Number of Months per Year that should also equal the Total Yearly Investment. I like to double check my work. If you have one time investments, you’ll have to make sure they’re added in correctly.

Seeing all of this written out really helped me get the big picture of our investments.

At the bottom, you’ll enter your Total Investment Goal from the top of the page and subtract your Yearly Investment to see the Adjustment Needed. If the number ends up negative, it means that you’re contributing less than you need to in order to reach your investment goals. If the number is positive, that means that you’re investing more than you need to in order to reach your goals.

On the right side, there’s a place for notes because, if you’re anything like me, you’ll have 22950q72 thoughts as you’re writing (and yes, that’s a q).

Below that is a box labeled R:IQ. If you know who Dave Ramsey and Chris Hogan are, you can probably skip the explanation (but you can stick around for it, too!).

The R:IQ (Retire Inspired Quotient) is a tool that allows you to enter what you want your retirement lifestyle to look like and how much you’ll need each month to make it happen. It then gives you an amount that you should be saving each month in order to reach that goal by the time you retire.

Whether or not you follow Dave Ramsey’s plan for getting out of debt and money management, this tool is a nice way to double check your numbers. So, if you do use it, you can input that number into the R:IQ box and then subtract it from your Current Contributions per month (divide your Yearly Investment by 12). This will give you the Adjustment Needed according to the R:IQ amount.

Last year, the number that the R:IQ tool gave me was about $150.00 less than what we were contributing to meet our 15% savings goal. We decided to keep things the way they were because more retirement savings isn’t a bad thing! With all of our recent job/lifestyle changes, it’s also nice knowing there was a cushion since our contributions are currently a little lower than they were at that time.

So, check out the Investment Contribution Inventory worksheet, and let me know what you think! I hope it helps!!!

You can also check out Debt Inventory {plus a free worksheet}, Sinking Funds & Savings Account Management {with a free tracking spreadsheet}, 3 Ways to Use Sinking Funds in the New Year and Managing Money Together {free download} if you’re looking for other resources!