The spreadsheet usually starts as a weekend project after a move. One tab for the new country, one for the old bank, a rates column you update when you remember. Six months later it is the most expensive document you never open.
Living across countries is not a niche hobby. It is a logistics problem: accounts, obligations, and a life that no longer shares a timezone with its money.
You do not need a more heroic spreadsheet. You need a picture that survives a flight, a new lease, and a client who pays in a third currency.
What actually breaks after a move
It is rarely “I cannot add.” It is that the categories of your old life do not match the new one, the payday moved, and two banks now both feel like “home” depending on the week.
Typical fracture points:
- A salary or retainer in one currency, rent in another, tax reserves in a third.
- Family support that still leaves the original-country account.
- Subscriptions that never got told you moved.
- A debt or deposit you still owe back home, quietly converting against you.
- A running tab with a sibling, a roommate, or a friend who fronted a deposit — in whatever currency it happened in, until it's settled.
None of that is exotic. It is just too many sources for a grid you maintain at midnight.
Case study: the first 90 days
Week one feels organised. You open a sheet with “Home,” “New city,” and “Rates.” You paste last month’s balances. Rent in the new currency is estimated. The USD client is “probably fine.”
Week three, the old-country streaming stack and a forgotten gym still debit the account you meant to wind down. Family support leaves on the 3rd as usual. You convert everything to the new “home” currency so the sheet looks tidy — and the grocery budget you copied from last year’s dollars now sits next to euro receipts.
Week eight, a retainer slips. The sheet still shows last month’s converted total because nobody opened the rates column after the flight. You say yes to a weekend trip because the big number looked soft. The soft number was stale FX plus money that was already committed to rent and the family transfer.
Nothing in that story required a markets forecast. It required one picture that still included both homes, upcoming outflows, and accounts in their real currencies — updated when money moved, not when you remembered the tab.
Keep both homes on purpose
Closing the old account on week one is how people get stranded. Keep the accounts that still have a job: receiving a client, paying a parent, holding a deposit. Name them after the job, not the bank’s marketing name.
What you should not keep is the fiction that those accounts will be mentally converted “when needed.” If they are open, they belong in the same picture as the new-country everyday account — the same discipline as building one number across many currencies.
Make the month start on your month
Calendar months are a convenience for people whose rent, salary, and bills share a country. If you get paid on the 20th and rent leaves on the 1st in another currency, your “month” is already a custom object.
Pick the day your financial month starts — often payday, sometimes rent day — and review on that cadence. The goal is one closed loop: what came in, what is already committed, what is left, in every currency you still touch. Locale and timezone settings matter here more than people admit; the product side of that lives under locale and timezone.
Import beats retyping
A move is when people try to become diligent data-entry clerks. They burn out, then go dark for six weeks, then decide the system “doesn’t work.”
Bring history in from CSV or a statement export once. Then record new activity in the same place you look at the total. The tool has to be the place you already opened to answer a question, not a second job. A guided CSV/XLSX import exists so the first month is not a typing contest.
A 30-minute setup after you land
You do not need a perfect chart of accounts on day one. You need coverage.
- List every account that still has a job — old country and new — and open them in one workspace, each in its real currency.
- Add rent, family support, and any other payment that will leave before you next get paid as recurring series in the currency they bill.
- Import one recent statement or CSV so history is not reinvented from memory.
- Set the financial month to your payday or rent day, not the calendar default if that default lies.
- Put the three budgets that actually stress you in the currency you spend.
Stop there. Perfect categories can wait until the picture is trustworthy.
When a spreadsheet is still fine
A sheet is enough if you truly hold one currency, update it the week you spend, and never use a converted total to approve a cross-border commitment. It is also fine as a one-off model — “what if I keep the old mortgage three more months?” — that you throw away after the decision.
It stops being fine when the sheet is the only place two banks, a retainer, and a family transfer coexist, and you only open it after something already went wrong. That is logistics debt, not a personal failing.
A note on advice vs tracking
Rasa Money is not a bank, broker, or advisor. It will not tell you whether to keep a home-country mortgage or how to structure tax. It will show you the accounts, budgets, recurring payments, debts and settlements you already have — in the currencies they are in — so those other conversations start from numbers instead of vibes.
That is the unglamorous advantage of leaving the spreadsheet: the picture is still there after you land.
Do I need to close my old-country accounts?
Not on a schedule invented by a blog post. Close them when they no longer have a job. Until then, track them. An unused account you forgot is more dangerous than an open one you named “Mum support” and review with the rest of the ledger.
What about tax and residency questions?
Tracking is not tax advice. Keep the currencies and dates honest so an accountant or advisor is not reconstructing your year from email receipts. The product boundary is the same as on About: we show the books you keep; we do not tell you how to structure a move.
Can I start from bank CSVs instead of a blank file?
Yes — and you should, if the alternative is retyping three months by hand. Import what you can, then record forward in the same system. Empty dashboards are how people abandon the project before the second payday.
Plans are on pricing. Start free — no card, no bank connection — and keep both homes in one picture until one of them truly has nothing left to do.