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24 January 2009

Using a Spending Diary



photo credit: seb payne

One of the best things I've ever done is to start a spending diary. It opened my eyes to just where my money was going and enabled me to set a realistic monthly budget.
When you start adding up how much you are spending on 'the little things' daily, you'll soon stop or cut back.
My bad habits were coffee, newspapers and magazines, bought every day these can easily add up to over £30 a week!

How I do it:
  • Keep every receipt
  • Record spending in my Moleskine diary every night
  • Transfer figures from the diary to an Excel sheet every Sunday morning
Excel Sheet:
  • Columns for all possible expenses, grocery, petrol, gifts, postage, clothes etc
  • Row for every day of the month
  • Total at the bottom
All the above takes less than 10 minutes a week and is a really simple way of recording your spending.

Does everyone keep a spending diary? If so what method do you use?

This post originally appeared at Move To Portugal in September 2008
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16 comments:

  1. I've just discovered my bank has a budget feature online. Now I can pull up my account transactions and categorize each expenditure. I can then create summaries and even pie charts! I use my debit card constantly instead of cash, so this pretty easily tracks my expenses.
    I'm with you on purchasing magazines! I shudder to think how much I have wasted on this over my life time.
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  2. It's all about mint.com <-- you can set it to analyze your online banking (awesome if you're a card user, but not so great if you're a cash user - then you still have to input everything manually).
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  3. Hi Amy, that's good that you can use for bank for this :)

    Hi Jesse, I'm not sure that we have anything similar to Mint here in the UK - I've used M'soft Money before but I find an excel sheet easier as I'm using cash alot :)
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  4. I don't currently do this but I think I should start, so from first thing tomrrow I'm starting a spending diary!
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  5. Hi there-I started using a spending diary for my clothes (thrifted, from shops, ebay,etc) and magazines from jan 08-what an eye opener!! Lets just say, I've decided that I won't be spending on clothes like I did last year and if I didn't track it, I would conveniently forget how much I did spend. its an excellent way to track spends, but I only do it for the above, as I feel in control of other spends in general.
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  6. This sounds awesome- is there any way you could post your Excel form? I'm terrible with Excel and am trying to come up with an easier way to track my expenses rather than the way I'm doing it now, which is in a long list in Excel.
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  7. Hi dd, did you start?

    Sharon they are really eye opening aren't they?

    Thanks Lil Ms I'll try to post it this weekend if I can. Thanks for visiting :)
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  8. It's truly amazing to see how much money you actually have when you keep a spending log. You also get to see all the dubious places it shouldnt' be used for (all those SBux coffees add up! ).

    I have my teal notebook to track daily spending and weekly bills sent out and my excel sheet to track the big pic. Let me know your feeback on the excel sheet, should you try it out. :)
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  9. Keeping food diaries and spending diaries work the same way! I keep both, and have lost 17 lbs and spent less!
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  11. I have two excel spreadsheets that I use to control/analyze my spending. One is a zero-based budget that I create before the month begins, allotting my money before it ever enters my checking account.

    Then I have a monthly expenditures spreadsheet, where I can input every expense, from mortgage, to internet/phone, to utilities, to drinks out with friends. It's a great way to see at a glance how much I'm spending, how much I should have left in the checking account, and where I can scrimp a bit more to increase money being sent to savings. . .

    Great post!
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  12. Moi? Excel :)

    Here's my Budgeting spreadsheet, which I use to put in my categories so I know how much I spent and how much is left.

    Fabulously Broke in the City

    "Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver."
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  13. Hi and thanks sharon, christine, frugals and fb :)

    FB can you password protect your spreadsheet?
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  14. I have written posts about exactly the same thing - the need to log every expense! I use www.spendingdiary.com which is free and allows me to log cash.

    At the beginning of each month I take out £100 from the ATM and I try to stick to this for the whole month. I leave an emergency £30 or so in the bank to use for card transactions or ebay. I buy items from ebay to make beauty products with, so it's sort of money saving anyway.

    The spending diary website works really well and automatically shows charts etc depending on what categories you have entered.

    In terms of snowflaking this is something I also do, particularly with my small but quite regular earnings from cashback sites (see my blog for full details). It earned me hundreds of pounds last year. It will earn less this year as I have less time and the recession has hit the advertising companies, but still good to pay off debts or save. For me I am saving towards Christmas, as last year my cashback earnings paid for all Christmas food and drink...

    x
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  15. I use an old fashion pen and paper to track my spending and a basic excel spread sheet to plan for bills coming, nothing fancy. The advantage to pen and paper is its easy, simple and you can reference it anytime. I dislike fancy excel sheets and budgeting programs because you spend more time running the program than anything.
    To keep it simple and easy I use a small spiral notebook and break my spending into 4 categories Petrol Misc (meds etc) Shopping and Eating Out. End of the week I total everything up. I also round up for simplicity. I empty my wallet every few days and mark in my spending.
    For fixed expenses (utilities rent etc) I have an excel spread sheet which I simply check off the bills as they come. While I know my monthly costs I don’t track them long term, I don’t see the need to do that. (but I do know the approx amount)
    For misc expense that can't be easily categorizing (car repairs dentist etc) I simply note that at the bottom. Over the past year I've averaged a bit under 200€ a week spending and between 100 and 500€ a month in misc expenses. This surprised me the most, but our food budget isn't that much compared to a say a new crown or timing belt and brakes for the car.

    Rob in Madrid
    ReplyDelete
  16. I go in spurts, I need to make this a habit though, because we are going to need to be extra careful with every penny! I'll be using a notebook & pen! Easier that way for me...
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