Tracking my spending
Mrs. Micah at Finance for a Freelance Life is challenging her readers to manually track their spending in February. This is something I’ve been meaning to start up again. A couple of years ago, I read “Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin and it really changed how I look at my finances. I tracked my finances manually for several months and learned a ton about where my money goes. I know for a fact that my biggest weakness in eating out. I’ve cut way back on dinners out but still have a terrible time bringing my lunch from home. With all the changes we have coming up, I feel like this would be a useful exercise to help prioritize our spending for the baby and a possible mortgage.
Currently, I’m using Mint to keep track of my expenses. I like how easy it is to check in on my finances. My favorite feature is the trends analysis. Mint creates a pie chart of your monthly expenses broken down into major categories and then you can drill down into each category to see all your expenditures. There are several drawbacks to Mint though. It doesn’t keep track of how much I save each month in relation to the other categories. In addition, because we have many accounts that we transfer funds between, it really screws up the tracking in Mint.
I truly believe that tracking and analyzing spending by hand is the most powerful way to understand where your money is going. Once you have that understanding, then you can start making significant changes.
So here goes.
Feb. 1, Sunday – total $140.80
Breakfast and to-go bagels from Einstein Bros $17.70
Last purchases at Babies’r'us before baby arrives $123.10
Feb. 2, Monday – total $27.12
Drinks and snacks at CVS $4.86
Lunch at Potbelly $6.69
Dinner at Boston Market $15.57
Join in at Where’s my money going?
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Glad to have you on board.
I know that when I first started this new job I bought lunch several times because I was still getting into the swing of things and wouldn’t be prepared ahead of time. It’s less hassle, but I tell myself that I get more “me” time by not standing in line.
[...] who have written about their decision to participate include: Liz at Both Sides of the Pond, zpetal (and her boyfriend), Rob at MoneyWatch, Jason at Live to Budget, and Ashley at Wide Open [...]