Expense tracking

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-26-1999
Expense tracking
2
Sun, 05-04-2008 - 1:56pm

How do you track your expenses?

Do you use a pen and paper or a computer program?

How do you break it all down?

Do you write down what you spend in a day, or do you automatically break your daily spending down into categories?

I've been writing down everything that I spend into a notebook, just under a heading for each day. The theory was that I would then break all this info out into categories to come up with an idea of what I spend on each sort of category in a given month. Problem is I don't do the breakdown at the end of the month because the notebook is kind of daunting to go back over. Lazy, I know.

So I was trying to figure out a better, more direct way...instead of writing each day's date in the book and writing everything in one column, perhaps I should have a page for each category for the month and write down my spending by category instead of by day.

What do you do?

Avatar for mahopac
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-24-1997
Sun, 05-04-2008 - 2:21pm

When I used to track expenses, I had a whiteboard in the kitchen. DH and I wrote what we spent every single day - everything, down to a small cup of coffee, package of gum, or dollar given to a homeless person. Every week, I'd add up the expenses into categories. I separated "grocery store food" purchases from "convenience food" purchases (e.g. coffee, pizza, candy, water, anything bought on the spur of the moment in lieu of shopping for a bargain or making it at home). I would go through the grocery store receipts and separate out "household supplies" (e.g. light bulbs, detergent), beer, and baby supplies, which I put in their own categories. I wanted to see what we were actually spending in each of those categories so I could figure out where we needed to cut back. You can't figure out how to cut back spending for a family of 5 when you have a expense category that includes everything from Cheerios to garbage bags to diapers to pet food to beer.

I included everything regardless of the form of payment, whether cash, Amex, Visa or check. If there are things that you only write checks for and have no other receipt, don't forget to add them to your budget items. Also things that are paid automatically from your checking account or a credit card.

You really have to do this for a few months to see what your budget needs to have in it, because you might only buy dog food once every two months but then you have to buy a lot of it.

If you keep up with this weekly, you'll get a much better handle on it than if you save it up for the end of the month. Then at the end of the month, add up your weekly totals.

Hope that helps.

Kelly

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-17-2007
Sun, 05-04-2008 - 7:16pm

I am enclosing this file for you to use. It might help you a little I downloaded it off the Maxed Out site and was thinking about using it myself but never did. It has pages with days on it about 6 weeks of them plus a general budget sheet. The way the site explained the sheets is you take from the list categories like