How personal should my personal financial statement be?

Question

When working with lenders, it is often required that you provide a personal financial statement including gross income, expenses, net worth, etc. For personal use, these should be as detailed as possible so that you can understand your complete financial picture as accurately as possible. I guess my question is, how detailed should the version of my financial statement be that I give to banks and potential sources of private money? For more personal expenses like going to the movies or going out to eat, do you typically just group those into a miscellaneous category for the lender? How much detail is too much?

Matthew C. · Answer

@Cameron Lee Brown Through working previously as a credit analyst, I've reviewed quite a few PFS.  Typically the Lender you're working with will provide you with a straightforward form that lists the broad areas (e.g., Personal Info, Employment, Income, Assets, Liabilities, etc).  This should provide them a high level financial position of the borrower.  You definitely want to provide all forms of income and expenses, but don't have to get as granular as detailing specific expenses like gas/groceries.  In regard to the income detail, you will typically see this broken out between the various forms of income (e.g., W2, Business Distributions, Rental Income, Interest & Dividends, etc.).

You should be able to do a simple google search on Personal Financial Statements, and see the standard format.  I personally just created a PFS file in excel that I track/update monthly so that I always have a fairly up to date one on hand - Also just a good way to track net worth MoM.