Terrible at tracking my money!

Mr_Curious

Emily_Joy wrote: »

Not a tip, just a simple question: what do you need to track your spending for?

In other words, do you feel you spend more than you should be doing? Or do you feel you should save more? What is your ultimate goal?

I guess I don't necessarily NEED to track my spending, more of a want so I know where it is going and should anything happen in my circumstances I know where adjustments can be made. I do take a good interest in the majority of the forums and one that always surprises me is the DFW boards when some people have very little idea of what is being spent when it comes to SOA.


As for the ultimate goal? Who wants to keep paying the mortgage?! But more of an exercise in financial understanding.


Thank you all for your replies and suggestions so far.



Mr_C

Nebulous2

Going back to my post at number 2. If you are earning more than you save then try to screw down your expenditure and your situation will improve without knowing where every penny goes.

A bit of a revelation to me was buying food at lunchtime. For over 20 years I had bought something to eat, a bag of crisps and a fizzy drink at lunchtime. I decided to lose weight at the same time as a local shop started selling 5 items of fruit for £1. I changed from what would now be known as a supermarket meal deal to eating fruit and as a side effect noticed a difference in how often I had to go to the atm to take out cash.

So while I said I don't have a budget I do have a good idea of where my money is going and have worked on reducing that. I have 4 pay as you go sims, for family members. I keep an eye on the dates when their fixed period is up and renegotiate or switch. As a result I'm paying less for 4 mobile phones than many of my colleagues or acquaintances are paying for 1.

getmore4less

Another MsMoney fan.

Have category missing in action, try to update once a day and reconcile weekly to start, as you get better at remembering you can update less regularly as long as missing in action is small.

If you use a smart phone record spending on that during the day get receipts for everything you can.

These days I find the only cash spends I don't get receipts for is the pub.

getmore4less

Once you have a very good idea where your money goes you can plan better.

A budget is the plan of where you want your money to go.
Try doing a retrospective last 12 month and see how much falls into the missing in action category,

I want best value from my cash by knowing where it goes I can make value judgments an have long term goals.

You can do forecasting like can I retire at 50, pay the mortgage off at 40 buy a better house.

One change we made was a weekly takeaway got swapped for an extra holiday.
It does not have to be spend less but spend better.

max_amber

i always write in down and record it everytime i spent money

Willing2Learn

Why not try out one of the many apps? Having an app on your phone can be handy as you can enter transactions whilst still in the shop.

Wally is meant to be good. I never used it, but it has good reviews. And the basic version is free too...

pumpkin89

colsten wrote: »

May I ask, are you satisfied that you

1. have emergency savings, e.g. 6 months worth of net income, in case you have an unexpected spend, or are unlucky enough to lose your job
2. are paying enough into a pension and/or LISA
3. are keeping your surplus money in an interest-paying account(s)?

Can I ask, why do people recommend 6 months of net income? Isn't it more relevant to have 6 months (or whatever length you deem appropriate) of expenditure?

Willing2Learn

My buffer is six months of expenditure...I think that if I set it up as six months of income I would have the same amount funds wouldn't I?

glider3560

Willing2Learn wrote: »

My buffer is six months of expenditure...I think that if I set it up as six months of income I would have the same amount funds wouldn't I?

That assumes you spend all your income every month.

glider3560

If you have trouble remembering to put everything into a spending diary, you could take the "get a receipt and enter them in bulk" approach.


Everytime you buy anything (especially by contactless or cash), get a receipt. Shove them in your wallet, then once every few days (or once a week, depending on how many receipts you have), put aside an hour to enter them all into a spending diary.