Calculating Your Personal Profits and Losses

Let's get this chapter off to a strong start by looking at you as not just one person but as a serious, complex financial operation. As such, you need to periodically assess your financial health. The standard measurement of financial health for a business is the profit and loss statement (P&L). This is a simple calculation of how much money the company made, minus expenses, which shows what the net profit or loss was for a given time period (for example, one fiscal year).

You'll need list

• Your income and expense tracking document from Chapter 1

• Your bill-paying system, medical bill tracking document, and “Did I Pay That?” record from Chapter 3

• The files you created in Chapters 5 and 6

• Any other information relevant to your financial status