Blog #4 – Personal Finance Tracking

Personal Finance Tracking (Budgeting Sucks)

Budgeting sucks. It’s boring, it makes you feel constrained, and makes you feel like you can’t spend any money. 

Completely WRONG!!!

“What gets measured gets managed”

Tracking your finances is the principal on how you get rich. Once you see where your money is going, you can figure out where you’re over spending. This can be pretty shocking to some but most people have no idea where their money is going. This is what leads to overspending or “Keeping up with the Joneses.”

I personally do not set a budget but I track every dime that I spend which is actually a lot easier that it seems. In the notes app on my phone I have on one page different categories that I spend, bills, and my income. At the end of the month I put all of this into a spreadsheet so I can see if I’m making money or not. It looked a bit like this when I started:

• Spending
  • Groceries
  • Eating Out
  • Personal
  • Gas
  • Rent/Mortgage
  • Internet
  • Utilities
  • Unexpected
• Income

It can be as simple as this for newbies or you can break it down more once you get comfortable. The main goal of this is to write in that number for each category at the end of the day. This is easy if you have a credit card and can see the recent purchases, or even better, if you keep the receipts. You have to be honest about what you spend so this can be beneficial to your life.

Blog Post #5 will get into my favorite books and why. One of the best books to understand personal finance is Set For Life by Scott Trench, The Psychology of Money, and The Millionaire Next Door. There are so many great books out there for personal finance and they all revolve around knowing where your money is going and spending less than you earn.

Get started and let me know what tricks you do to track your money or how this helped you in some way!