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Do you keep a spending diary?

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Just wondering, I never have done before but I'm making a renewed effort to clear my overdraft so I've made myself a pretty spreadsheet in Excel. It's got an incomings column with spaces for my work income and any extra I earn (probably through eBay), and an outgoings column with my rent, bills, uni fees, food, clothes, etc. It adds them up for me, so I can see at a glance how much I've got coming in and how much going out.

Do you have anything similar? Is this sad? :D
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Comments

  • Yes, I do. And no, it isn't sad - it's what's keeping me sane, to be honest! :)
  • timefortea
    timefortea Posts: 328 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Debt-free and Proud!
    I forgot to mention something that might add to the saddo level - I gave it a background of pretty bird pictures. :)
  • Mine is colour-coded with different columns and cells. And when I haven't got any figures to tweak, I change the colours instead :)
  • mo786uk
    mo786uk Posts: 1,379 Forumite
    edited 29 April 2011 at 12:58AM
    Kind of.

    I have my wages paid into my current account. I then transfer over a certain amount of money to pay all my regular household bills into a spereate current account.

    I work out my household bills in an excel spreadsheet - usually things stay pretty static.

    I dont really keep track of general day to day spending though - I know people who do though.
  • timefortea
    timefortea Posts: 328 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Debt-free and Proud!
    It's the day to day spending that I'm trying to keep track of, really. I can check my online banking to see how much my bills are, but I'm interested to know where all of the money that I take out at cash machines is going.

    I'm trying to make myself more accountable, too. If I buy something stupid and then have to go home and write down in my spreadsheet what I've done, I'll be more likely to leave it on the shelf.
  • Asiacat
    Asiacat Posts: 163 Forumite
    I've done it for seven years now and it's one of my better decisions.

    The first month is the eye opener. You will be shocked at how much you spend on certain items.

    However once you have this info you can set about setting budgets for each item of expenditure - a far more effective strategy than simply saying I will spend less.

    For example i was shocked to find i spent 5000 baht (I live in Thailand) on books. I have now set a monthly limit of 2000 baht.

    I keep an A5 diary with me and write all my spends day to day and then spend an hour or so each Sunday evening entering it into MS Money.
  • canidothis
    canidothis Posts: 226 Forumite
    I love my spreadsheet!! Ive only just got my head round needing to sort out my finances and its taken a few weeks to develop my spreadsheet. I enter my income and have a column of budgetted outgoings then I have an actual column so when the DD comes out of the bank I enter the actual amount. Over the last few weeks Ive learnt conditional formatting so that my cells change colour dependant on cell value and I have formulas to tell me what my predicted balance will be.
    I dont do a spending diary - I allow myself £10 per week for odds and sods but hardly ever take it out of the bank - I always take lunch to work so dont really have a need to spend. Ive become obsessed with my spreadsheet and I get panicky about it being lost on my computer so Ive sent one to work as well, just in case!!

    Since using the spreadsheet I can see where to shave money off, two months ago I was not saving for emergencies, car tax/mot, or entertainment and I would of said I couldnt afford it, probably due to my debts I cant afford it - however I prefer the two pronged approach to this money management business. xx
    LBM March 2011 (what on earth took me so long?)
    overdraft (1) -2950 overdraft (2) -246.00
    total CC £12,661 :eek:
    loan £5000
    DFD 2016:eek::eek: (cant come soon enough)
  • KPR11
    KPR11 Posts: 610 Forumite
    Had a spreadsheet, found it a bit too much work as I wanted certain things automatically updated etc then discovered the joys of MS Money! Can not recommend it enough! I tend to update on a daily basis, gives me warning on things - when I am under a certain balance, budget is approaching the limit etc!

    Most banks allow you to download statements in a format compatible with MS Money so just a job of importing and categorising!
    £365 in 365 days challenge: £730 / £150
  • canidothis wrote: »
    Ive become obsessed with my spreadsheet and I get panicky about it being lost on my computer so Ive sent one to work as well, just in case!!

    I know that feeling :eek: - I have mine on my good laptop and also on the semi-broken one that only come on if you whack it :D. I also got a USB memory stick at Christmas and it's on there too as back up!

    And conditional formatting is the business :j
    DFW Nerd Club # 1364
  • danothy
    danothy Posts: 2,200 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    It's far from sad, in fact it's only what I'd call responsible money management. So grats, you've stepped out of the crowd of people financially coasting through life and taken control.

    I expect most people could say reasonably accurately how much they had come in during a given year but would have a hard time saying how much they spent in said year and more crucially not be able to say what they spent it on.

    I can't imagine a company that would survive operating without knowing where every penny it spent went and where every penny coming in came from, so it baffles me how individuals manage it.

    I've been keeping one for approx. nine months now and I go one step further than excel and use gnucash to log every transaction (cash, credit card, bank transfers, even moving money between accounts). So if anyone is sad it's me, but I can live with that quite happily.

    When I started my MSE journey I found that I couldn't budget (to the point where I couldn't even fill in the SoA forms properly) because I had no idea what appropriate monthly amounts were to allocate to things like food, clothing and even utilities. The spending diary has given me information about what I spend in each category, which in turn let me know what my existing de facto budget allocations are and eventually where there is waste and where to cut spending back.

    As I final though to this ramble about spending diaries I will say this: Keep it up, it's quite hard to do at first, but I've now got to the point where it's second nature and I'm starting to fill in expected spending to project my financial situation. That feels good.
    If you think of it as 'us' verses 'them', then it's probably your side that are the villains.
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