ChApter 5 | YOUR RESUME AND FINANCIAL STATEMENT | 85
Draft Your Personal Financial Statement ..............................................................................
You can skip the rest of this chapter unless
you are seeking a loan or investors for your
business.
Your personal financial statement will
list your personal assets, liabilities, income,
and expenses. It tells your backers a lot
about your ability to handle money. Don’t
be discouraged if your financial condition
is weak. Your backers want to know about
you, the good and the bad, and they
under stand that you need money.
Preparing this statement in a form
lenders are used to seeing involves several
steps, which this chapter will take you
through step by step. As you’ll see, the task
is not much harder than filling out a credit
application.
Drawing up a good personal financial
statement isn’t difficult, but it does involve
attention to detail. I recommend that you
do a rough draft first.
If you already own or have an interest
in an existing business, you may wish
to include a separate statement of the
business’s net worth or balance sheet
and profit and loss statement. If you
own all or a portion of a business and
don’t plan to submit a separate statement
on the business, include your share of
the business on this personal financial
statement.TiP
Co-owned property note: If you own
an item with others and the other owners will
not sign for the loan, enter only the value of
your share of the assets and corresponding
liability. If all parties will sign for the loan, enter
the full amount. Describe the ownership type
(joint tenancy, community property, tenants in
common, partnership, or separate property). If
you’re not sure how you own property, look at
the deed or other title document.Determine Your Assets
Your task is to briefly describe and
estimate the current value of everything
you own, even if you owe money against
it. If you’re not sure how much a particular
item is worth, make an estimate now and
verify it later. Give the market value—
the price for which you could sell the
particular piece of property today.CD-ROM
A copy of the Personal Financial
Statement is included on the CD-ROM in
Excel spreadsheet format. You can find it
under the filename FinancialStatement.xls.
Note that formulas have been embedded
in the spreadsheet document so that it will
automatically calculate relevant totals.