Spending Diary

MrsSnowman

Hi,

I am a debt free wannabe! I have worked out a sensible plan, which will have me debt free in 2 years

I am terrible for "frittering" my money away, so a friend suggested keeping a spending diary. I have a notebook to note down everything that I spend, but I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts/opinions on what else I should record?

I was thinking of having the columns:
Date
Amount
What
something about need (as in definately needed vs luxury item)

any and all suggestions welcome!

Many thanks

MrsSnowman

gargrave50

I didn't really bother with columns, I just had a page for each day with the date. Underneath I would list each item bought or if groceries just put it under groceries with the amount. After one week you should be able to look back and then make a plan of where to reduce your spending.

The idea of the diary is to show what you spend to enable you to change your spending!

backinbusiness

Don't make it too detailed otherwise it's too much of a chore.

As above poster says, keep it for a month and then see where your hard-earned money is actually going!

Good luck.

bib

laura2481

Hi MrsSnowman!
I'm thinking of doing a diary from 1st of Aug (try and get my spending under control again.. it's been a struggle this month and I've had to resort to my CC for these last few days )
Anyways, I was going to get a little notebook (actually probably better to dig out some unused one I've almost definitely got lurking somewhere) and I was going to just do a page per day, and total up all spending at end of each day but I actually like your idea of having something for 'needed/wanted' to make me face up to what is necessary spending- bills etc, and what is frittering away money.
There is also an online spending diary you can fill in http://www.spendingdiary.com/ which I may transfer my figures to once per week to see pie charts etc... yeah, I'm a geek

DrSqueeze

My suggestion would be a separate page for each "type" of spending.

So page one might be food shopping, page two: household (e.g. cleaning products), page three: travel, fuel & fares, page four: clothes, page five: luxuries... and so on.

I suspect it will be a real eye opener when you see how much you're spending under each. And rather than adding it all up at the end, keep a running total - then you can watch how quickly you're spending as well.

ixia

i did it for a while but I just kept a note of spending for each day. It did make me think a bit more about what I was spending and it is an eyeopener to see where it all goes.

Good luck with it.

MrsSnowman

Thanks for all the tips. Day one has started, and I'm pleased that so far nothing has been spent. Home made lunches are lovely!