2026 Federal Wildland Firefighter financial toolkit
Link to previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wildfire/comments/1hrige4/update_wildland_firefighter_financial_toolkit/
I have created a full calendar year view financial planning toolkit built specifically for federal wildland firefighters. It allows you to estimate your income and taxes, model different savings scenarios, project and track spending, compare different health/life insurance options, and more.
This is a project that I maintain for my own use, and I think others may find value in it as well. Last year when I posted this I took a lot of time to make different versions that could run in Google Sheets, or the free version of Excel for the web. I have not done that this year.
If you want to check it out you will need to use the desktop version of Microsoft Excel. No other spreadsheet program will work correctly. You will also need to enable VBA Macros.
If you want to check this out and have any questions about setting it up or general use, please feel free to comment or DM. I will do my best to support anyone who is interested in this project as I have time.
Here is the link to download the current version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oAEnyFsWIj-OJldZlNxncTY8poV3D7cV/view?usp=sharing
Again, you will need to download this file and open it in Excel for Desktop. I have only tested this on the Microsoft Windows version of excel. I have no idea how it will work on Mac... I suspect it won't.
I have not really come up with a good way to share this tool and push updates to other people who want to use it. I do update it fairly often as I find little errors and bugs, or add new features. If enough people are interested I may develop a feature to roll your current setup to a new version to ease the process of moving to an updated workbook. So if anyone actually uses this and wants to receive updates let me know and I will look at adding such a feature, probably when fire season winds down this fall.