How to Keep track of your Money the Easy Way

If you're new here and would like to be notified the next time I write something, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for Reading!


You don’t need complex software or large complex books to keep track of your expenses. All you have to do is take 5 minutes out of everyday and write down your expenses. To do this, you’ll need some envelopes, a small notepad/book, a box with dividers and a pencil/pen.

Step 1

When purchasing a product or service, keep every receipt and put it into an envelope. Keep all your receipts for the day into one envelope and at the end of the day, staple them together and write the date on the top receipt. Keep a separate envelope for all your monthly or quarterly expenses. Every day you should be using a new envelope. Personally, I use 8 envelopes that I picked up at my local bank’s ATM and I use them over and over again (7 for the daily expenses and 1 for my monthly/quarterly expenses).

Step 2

At the end of each day, I write down in my expense book what I purchased and why. I leave the first page of the book and the first page of every new month blank so I can write down my monthly or quarterly expenses such as utilities or property tax. I don’t add these expenses with my daily expenses because they are out of my control, I have to pay them no matter what so I like to have them in the front of each month so I can easily find them.

Step 3

At the end of every week I look over my expenses and make sure I didn’t spend foolishly. If I happened to find a few expenses that I could have done without, I highlight them so that they are easily found when I do my monthly review. Once I’m satisfied with my book update, I take my seven stacks of receipts and put them in my box which contains 52 dividers (one for every week). I reuse my envelopes for the following week. That 1 envelope that you keep for monthly/quarterly expenses, can be added with the first week of every month so that you can find them quickly.

Step 4

At the end of the month I do a simple review to see how well I did for the month. I try to make it a competition so that I get better and better every month. If there is a discrepancy in my bank account or visa bill, I can easily look back at the book to see what went wrong or who made a mistake. I always have all my receipts as a backup also.

Step 5

I find the pen and pencil method the simplest to do. It only takes me about five minutes a day and it has helped me in finding my bad spending habits and has helped me save a great deal of money in the long run. If you are computer savvy, you can do something similar on word or make an excel spreadsheet instead of using the book.

StumbleUpon It!

Related Posts

Filed Under Budgeting 

Comments

One Response to “How to Keep track of your Money the Easy Way”

  1. Budgeting 101 | Financial Learn on April 27th, 2008 2:12 pm

    [...] Tracking your Budget - Tracking your budget/expenses is a key ingredient to budgeting.  You have to be able to see what [...]

Got something to say?