does anyone keep track of their expenses?

[Busie23]

From 1998 till about 5 months ago I kept track of every dollar I spent. I had did it the old fashioned way and wrote down everything that I bought everyday and any income that I had. Then at the end of each month I tallied it all up and could tell exactly where all my money was going.

I got out of my habit when I started working a few months ago at my real job and need to get motivated to get back into again. The big problem is that I don't want to go back to doing it the old way but would much rather use a program to help out. I was going to throw something together in excel but decided to look for info here. Anyone do anything like this or know of any quality programs to help me out?

Thanks,

Sean

 

[Yossarian]

MS Money or Quicken

 

[Anubis]

i would have said excell but you dont wanna do that.
wont quicken or quickbooks do something like that for you

 

[Busie23]

I'm sure money will do it for sure but I don't want to use something so complex for my simple stuff. I would rather do something up in excel or find an excel sheet that some one else had already set up. I guess its more of a time issue as opposed to anything else. Since I have started working fulltime I have found myself with no spare time and keep neglecting to get this task done.

 

[AbsolutZero]

Yahoo Finance has a Money Manager thats not bad. If your credit cards are added to it, it will automatically track the expenses by category. Of course you'd still have to enter your cash and check purchases manually. I've been using it for a year, not bad for the price (free).

 

[Jzero]

I made something in Excel but I didn't make a good habit of using it. I really should...
It was pretty easy. I just made a column for each month of the year. Last month's balance is at the top, then I add my paycheck and I have a few empty fields for extra income.
Then I subtract my recurring expenses for bills and stuff, followed by my leftover "free" money (my income - my recurring costs).
Then I have a bunch of lines for ad hoc expenses.
At the bottom I have the amount of money I "wasted" on ad hoc stuff
Then my balance at the end of the month.

After that I added some metrics - How much of my paycheck I wasted, what % of my paycheck I wasted, annual projections, averages. You can really go to town. It's kind of fun, but one month I forgot to do it and it got all out of whack and I got out of the habit.
Now that it's Jan. I should really do it again.

 

[Busie23]

I had it broken down in a bunch of categories like, car, food, rent, entertainment, misc, etc. Then tallied each of those up and always kinda knew what was going to where each month. I could always easily tell when I started blowing money on stupid stuff and would adjust accoring the next month. I just need to start doing it again since now I have all kinds of money going in and out. What really made it tough for me was that I was doing all kinds of ebay stuff before and tried to keep track of that as well, and did a decent job up until recently.

I like you approach to the "wasted money", it really gets you thinking about where your money really goes. We had a guest speaker come in in my Finace class in High school and he was some retired millionaire who was spitting out facts about the rich and how something like 97% of the mutlimillionaires keep super strict budgets like that. Ever since then I did it.

 

[Yossarian]

Originally posted by: Busie23
I'm sure money will do it for sure but I don't want to use something so complex for my simple stuff. I would rather do something up in excel or find an excel sheet that some one else had already set up. I guess its more of a time issue as opposed to anything else. Since I have started working fulltime I have found myself with no spare time and keep neglecting to get this task done.

If time is an issue I definitely recommend Money. It isn't complex, just powerful. For example I have it set up to download transactions automatically from my Discover card. All I have to do is go down the list and approve or modify each one and it's entered automatically. The first time you enter a payee with a category (Quiznos/food--eating out) it remembers it so your categories are done automatically too. Makes balancing your account with your statement super easy and fast.

 

[Busie23]

Thanks PipBoy, the funny thing is that I eat at Quiznos everyday for lunch.

 

[Lithium381]

hrm, i'm not too tedious about it, though i do save any big ticket receipts, if i go and have a coke or something for a buck, i dont' write that down, though all of my transactiosn are cash as i don't have CC's or a checking account.....and i save all MO stubs or check stubs....

 

[Darein]

MS Money works well for me, its pretty simple and I don't use any of its fancy features.

 

[FoBoT]

i can barely keep track of my money, tracking my expenses would be impossible

 

[StageLeft]

yes

 

[dethman]

since i only use credit cards its pretty easy to keep track of my expenses.

 

[Sundog]

Sure do.

 

[fr]

I use Microsoft Money. A PDA also helps

 

[Zim Hosein]

I keep track of all my expenses, otherwise I'd be broke, making and keeping a budget is key IMHO

 

[SCSIfreek]

I had been doing it since last year and I'm spending waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much on food. Monthly expense is $3500+ :Q



--Scsi

 

[psianime]

I make sure I don't splurge and I look at my statements and I try to justify purchases. I don't really count dollar by dollar hour much I spend. Thats time consuming.

-psianime

 

[tcsenter]

From 1998 till about 5 months ago I kept track of every dollar I spent. I had did it the old fashioned way and wrote down everything that I bought everyday and any income that I had. Then at the end of each month I tallied it all up and could tell exactly where all my money was going.

Damn that required a lot of discipline. My hat's off to you, I've never been able keep track of my expenses for more than a week. haha

 

[Busie23]

Anymore ideas?