How do you record your expenses?

GreyQueen

Fusspot wrote: »

Thank you for your replies. I think it will help me to log direct debits, even though they can be seen on my bank statement. I think it must be very time consuming to record every single expenditure. Large items are OK but every cup of coffee or pound spent, logging that must be tedious.

It's horses for courses, really. I guess that we all have slightly-different lifestyles and slightly different temperaments about record-keeping. Be peculiar if it was otherwise, really.

Casting a glance over my accounts for Oct 2018 reveals 23 occasions when I opened my wallet (5 of those fell into one line on the accounts). I also made 16 transactions for grocery shopping, which averaged at £4.18 per trip. I walk past the supermarket twice a day, eat predominantly fresh food and shop thus in small amounts to stop things going off.

Of the 23 non-grocery transactions, 5 were (:o) at the chippy, and I know the price of what I bought so can add it in whenever it's convenient. One other was for a class (again, a fixed price) and yet another was for a physical therapy, again, known price. Everything else (apart from one bus ticket and one online purchase) was a small purchase from a charity shop and had a receipt, so all easy to recall.

But I will acknowledge that I have deliberately organised my life to be as simple as possible.:rotfl:

firebubble

"I think it must be very time consuming to record every single expenditure. Large items are OK but every cup of coffee or pound spent, logging that must be tedious."

Yep, and that's often enough to stop me spending on coffees and chocolate bars !

LameWolf

Another thing I do, just as an aside, is keep one month ahead with allocating the monthly Direct Debits. So although it's only November now, December's Direct Debit money is already earmarked and can't be used for anything else. This is a safety measure in case for some reason our money didn't get paid into the bank.

boliston

firebubble wrote: »

"I think it must be very time consuming to record every single expenditure. Large items are OK but every cup of coffee or pound spent, logging that must be tedious."

Yep, and that's often enough to stop me spending on coffees and chocolate bars !

I find the answer to this is to use cash to pay for cups of coffee - i usually draw out £10 every couple of weeks as there is not really anything else I can think of apart from coffee that I ever use cash for - I just post cash withdrawals to 'food & drink' on quickbooks which avoids having to record the detail of each cup drunk

[Deleted User]

I draw £60.00 per month from the bank in cash for food shopping anything left goes into a seperate holiday account on the first day of the new month when I draw another £60.00 out

My main bills are all paid by the bank and I have a large A 4 sized book which I have one page on the right side for bills to be paid and I check online every so often to make sure they have got out ,On the left hand side I list various savings accounts and how much is in there so I know almost to the penny how much I have i have a separate purse for my food shopping cash and in my main purse I have a small amount of cash for treats etc which I top up when it gets low .I don't like to carry much cash around with me and only as a rule go food shopping twice a month this month however it will be less as I am doing my best to eat from my stocks in the freezer and cupboards and will only buy strict essentials as I go through the month 4th November today and nothing spent so far this month

JackieO xx

VfM4meplse

firebubble wrote: »

"I think it must be very time consuming to record every single expenditure. Large items are OK but every cup of coffee or pound spent, logging that must be tedious."

Yep, and that's often enough to stop me spending on coffees and chocolate bars !

Its not enough to stop me spending until about day 17 when I tot up the small incidentals on the cc bill and then decide: enough. But my 3-4 times a week coffee habit has had to stop, now I very rarely have one but when I do, I relish it. In October my personal treat expenditure was about £16 but I felt the pinch a bit due to fixed unavoidable costs.

It's the start of the month and have treated myself today

Fusspot

I spend on coffees out a lot as it's my social thing so it does mount up. But I'm not out of pocket because of it and I don't drink or smoke and don't go on holiday every year.

However, paying by cash for coffee soon makes it run down but paying by card for small things gets a bit much on the bank statement.

ruby_eskimo

I have a spreadsheet with 3 sheets in it:

1) My budget for the year on it of all my regular payments and direct debits which I mark off when they leave my bank account / I make the payment

2) My savings accounts so I can keep track of how much I have in each account and how close to my targets I am

3) My spending tracker which I update every Sunday. During the week I keep all my receipts in a little plastic wallet in my bag and then on a Sunday I go through the wallet and update the spending tracker. I also update the budget tracker to see how much I've spent on petrol or food for example out of the amount I've budgeted for it that month and lets me see if I need to readjust my budget to accommodate for inflated petrol prices or do I in fact need to tell my boss that I have to work from home a couple of days the following week so I don't have to pay for petrol.

I work with spreadsheets day in day out as my job so I'm just using what I'm used to.

oldernonethewiser

I know my monthly income and I know how much my DDs going out amount to.



I carry a small notebook to jot down my daily spend.



Possibly a bit old fashioned but it works for me.


I tend to pay cash for daily expenditure.

suki1964

my banks app is perfect for me, it shows where every penny is spent

If I do make a cash withdrawal I can easily split that down to where it went

But for the whole it suits me as it shows how much I spend in supermarkets, petrol, car costs, entertainment, clothes etc at a glance