Money Saving 101: Keep Track of Your Spending

How do you keep track of your expenses? I think that’s a fairly valid question. You can’t even start to begin saving money until you actually know where your money is going. 

There are a variety of ways to keep track of your spending:

Keep track of all purchases using a notebook. I keep a small 2” by 3” notebook in my purse. I write down each and every purchase I make. This includes all those vending machine stops as well. Those may seem small, but they do add up over time. It took awhile for me to get used to keeping track of each thing I spent money on, but now I’m used to it. This notebook allows me to tally up all my spending at the end of the month and see where each and every penny is being spent. When you know where your money is going, you can see where you can start to cut spending. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that my dear boyfriend and I are on a quest to not eat out for 30 days. This is because, after keeping track of where our money was going, I discovered that the majority of it was spent on food. 

A few other places you can keep track of spending:

Mint.com: Mint.com is similar to Quickbooks. It allows you to keep track of income and expenses. It also makes some handy dandy graphs at the end of the month, quarter, and year. You can categorize each expense and see where you can cut.

Excel: I’m a fan of budgeting using excel. I tend to keep a budget and an actual account of my income and spending. You can find a free excel spreadsheet to keep track of income and expenses here. This isn’t the one I use as I have created my own, but this is a nice example. 

Bank Website: My bank website allows me to categorize all incomes and expenses. It is an easy and free way for me to keep track of my actual spending.

Credit Card Sites: Some credit cards allow you to do the same thing as my bank website does. If you’re a credit card spender, then this may be useful for you.