How do you keep track of your spending

OldMusicGuy

Detailed Excel spreadsheet with all expenditure itemised and allocated to various spending categories. We have a monthly budget for each category, so I am able to do a detailed actual/budget variance analysis on monthly and cumulative annual bases. This also allows me to create a pretty good forecast of future expenditure, at least for all the regular stuff. Being able to download bank statements into Excel makes this easy.

This is linked to my 32 year retirement planning spreadsheet so that I can constantly update that as well.

I'm not sure if the above may be connected to the fact that I spent a 40 year career in corporate accounting, finance and finance/ERP systems......

chucknorris

Mnd wrote: »

I use a self built excel sheet for keeping track of our finances, I don't track spending..we went to cinema today, had a pint...that's gone...the savings total will reflect this but I don't worry what is was spent on. We live within our means and don't waste money (unless you count the Christopher Robin film as a waste of money, don't tell the wife! )

Same here, I use a spreadsheet to track my savings and investments. But I can't see any point in tracking my expenditure, apart from on my investment properties, which of course I have to do for my tax return.

kuratowski

Personally I do track my expenditure to avoid overspending, to ensure I meet my saving goals. A few years ago my savings were disappearing year-on-year, so tighter control over spending was needed. Others may be in a more fortunate position.

However, as others have said, the apps or websites that claim to classify your spending for you are not reliable. Manually categorising the expenditure each time you spend money (ideally immediately) is a great way of focusing the mind.

For me the most convenient way to to this is with an app on my phone (but others may prefer other methods). The free app "Spending Tracker" is extremely easy to use.

I've also used YNAB (not free) - which is great for forcing you to prioritise and not spending the same money twice. I enter all transactions manually and don't attempt to link it to my banks. But this is not a spending tracker, it's a budgeting app.

I've been trying out Buxfer (also not free) - first impression is that it's really slow, compared to the other software. The budgeting system is less strict than YNAB. It does have some possibly interesting charts, but you can easily create these yourself in Excel if so-minded.

mirko

I created mine in Google Sheets so I could look at them on my desktop PC as well as my phone - or even at work if I wanted to. Means it's automatically backed up unlike a normal Excel spreadsheet.

I itemise all spending at the end of each month. I also keep tabs of when things need renewing like car insurance, services etc as well as a TODO list of things that need doing to reduce expenditure.

Just need to get on and do some of those things on the TODO list now!

SnowMan

I tracked my outgoings for a few years to work out what my annual expenditure was. The reason for that was just to get an idea on how much I was spending on irregular expenditure such as food, holidays etc.

I cross-checked the annual expenditure figure by looking at

income for year
plus reduction in savings
plus savings interest
less net money allocated to investments (including pensions)

I don't track expenditure now apart from adjusting in my excel spreadsheet for the regular items such as council tax, insurances etc as and when they change.

But adjusting for these should get me close to my annual spend.

Don't forget to allow for contingencies, such as a new car, significant house repairs etc.

Youngfiguy put up a detailed explanation on how he and his wife track their expenditure. It's quite similar to how I tracked mine a few years ago, as I essentially downloaded bank statements into excel and then allocated items to categories.

https://youngfiguy.com/how-we-track-our-expenses/

onomatopoeia99

Simple excel spreadsheet to track account balances, savings + investment total and outstanding mortgage amount. Other than large / ongoing projects (e.g. my DIY kitchen replacements), I don't track what I spend money on, if I spend it, it's gone.

TonyMMM

Zero_Sum wrote: »

MS Money..

Me too - probably been using it for nearly 20 years.

PRAISETHESUN

Same as OP i just use a spreadsheet, where I manually go through my receipts and input the amount I've spent into categories which I find useful (eg. food, booze, fuel, utilities, etc).

I've been experimenting with account aggregation apps such as Yolt to help consolidate multiple savings accounts into a single place, but I haven't really been sold on them. It seems like you have to give up a lot of privacy for not much gain IMO

Stubod

+ another for using excel. I have used excel for monitoring all our expenditure v income for the last 20 + yrs. Using excel means you can easily change things (formats, calculations etc) when you need to and the information you gather can be used for whatever analysis you think you need to make. (eg average annual expenditure over the years to help assess how much you need in retirement etc.)


..so it's excel all the way for me.

hollie.weimeraner

Quicken deluxe 2002, the last UK version that was available. Brilliant and simple. I tried MS Money and couldn't get on with it but do know loads swear by it