Do you Track Every Single Expense?

You are right when you said that you need to track your expenses when you are adjusting to a new budget or attempting to cut down expenses. The key issue here is awareness of where your money goes to and it's a great way to be in control of your finances. It's great to hear that your finances are in order. Keep it up!

Tracking your expenses can be done for a couple of months, like what you did. But those few months of record give you a very good gauge as to how much you need to spend on essential items (bills, food, etc). being aware of this also helps you to see whether you are spending more than your income. In your case, you became aware of the need to make more money. I think that is one of the greatest benefits of tracking your expenses. It might spur you to do more in whatever we do, in terms of earning more money and improving our standards of living.

I love it when you say that we are "addicted" to taking note of our expenses . To some people, this may seem rather paranoid behaviour but the benefits of doing this is tremendous. First of all, you will know exactly what is spent and what is not, then you can proceed to make a budget. Without tracking your expenses, you will have no idea where to start when making a budget. You will also get to make a comparison in prices and take note when there is a REAL sale/discount, just because you have everything recorded. On top of that, you are in greater control of your finances and able to grow your wealth rather than live from paycheck to paycheck. I know that keeping track of the small expenses is hard work, but most of the times, the little expenses are the ones that add up to quite a bit. Thus, it is important to keep track of both. My memory fails too. There will be moments when I forget to record and I can't remember the purchase or product or service, and figures will not tally. That frustrates me sometimes.

Hi nanayangel, It's great that you could elicit the help of your husband to track your spending. But I still feel that it's a good idea for women to play a direct role in their our personal finances. I used to carry a tiny (as opposed to your big log book) notebook to record each and every expenses. It was inconvenient. You have to secretly record your spending when you step out of a store. I have a poor memory, you see, so I have to record it immediately or I will forget. With my smartphone and those wonderful apps, I manage to record my expenses with greater accuracy and precision. There were less mistakes in recording and I could easily tally the figures. I'm really enjoying this!

You are absolutely right when you say that it's a good habit to track your expenses. I think your girlfriend did you a favour by getting you to change your perspective. Although we may think that we are not spending much on anything, you will be surprised that after a certain amount of time, you have nothing to show in terms of savings. Thus, awareness is key here. When you know where your money goes (expenses), you will know where the rest should be (savings). Thus I think I shall continue to track my expenses - a great habit to cultivate in the young as well.

For some people, keeping track of their expenses can be done for a short period, let say a month. Subsequently, once you are already aware of your spending habits, you can sense when you are overspending or not. For some people, if they track, they find that they would be spending less. If they do not track they will spend more. The mere act of recording your expenses each time makes you more aware and makes it harder for you to spend money. You are absolutely right about the small expenses that "kill us" because these small items are often bought repeatedly over the month and that few extra cents you can save can amount to a lot over time.

Of course. Everyone's situation is different and I didn't mean that everyone should do as I do, just that bank tracking works for me. However one does it, we need to be aware of what we are spending.

Hi Peavey, Maybe it is easy for you to make all your transactions through banking. It is not the case for us. There are some shops were frequent who accept bank transactions. They deal mostly with cash. Thus, it would mean I have a harder time keeping track of bank transactions as well as loose cash money. At the same time, I also have automatic deductions for some expenses. You are right about keeping track of expenses can be eye-opening for some people. Some people may realise they are spending more than they earn. Some realise that they are spending more on a particular category, etc. It's true that the small amounts add up to a lot if you are not aware. It catches a person by surprise.

Everyone will have their own tracking system that works for them, of course. But yours seem to be the easiest . Tracking from several locations can be a headache. I think it is important for everyone to know what they are spending on. I have a friend who has an $80,000 credit card debt. He kept rolling his debts from one card to another, until all the banks do not want to give him any more credit. I had wanted to help him to get his finances right, but he was more interested to borrow money from me.

My husband when he was alive never once balanced his checkbook. I dont know how he did it but he never went over the money that was in his account and there wasent that much in there that he could afford to not keep track of things like that but somehow in his own way he managed. I didnt mean that the ocd helped me it means that it hinders me because it makes me so obsessive about keeping track of things.

Sometimes being obsessed about some things can be beneficial. To me, if I'm obsessed with keeping track of my finances, it's great! Because there are many times when I fall out from my habits due to laziness. Haiz.

That's great that you are at least tracking your money in your checking account. That's crucial. Some people don't even do that! Anyway, writing things down help you remember things better. I'm not sure how being an OCD helps you when you jot down things. I'm now acting like I have OCD by jotting down everything I spend on, big or small expenses. Initially, when I started, I was spending more than I was earning. I cut down and became more aware of my expenses. My finances got better.

Sometimes it may be difficult for us to get our other half to do something. Even though I track my expenses, my husband don't. So my suggestion would be for you to get started first. Track expenses which you have absolute control. If you have a joint account, you may find it difficult to track each other's expenses. Track your own personal account in that case. It would be easier. Tell yourself that you just have to track for one month, not forever. The idea is to find out what you have been spending on and are there areas you feel that you need to cut down on. That's all. Once you are aware of that, you need not track anymore because you know how you are spending. You will become more conscious of your spending hopefully.

Yeah, it's like going on a diet and you start to keep track of your food intake. I find tracking my food intake more difficult because sometimes you just can't say how many calories are in this bowl of local food. Information about localised food is less readily available. However with tracking your personal expenses, you will know exactly how much you have spent. As such, you will know exactly where you need to trim. Glad that you have identified the areas that needed changes in your expenses. As a family, eating out is our biggest outflow. Hubby loves to dine out but he pays for them. Haha! Actually it does not take up much time to track your expenses. If you are using a smartphone, keying in is simple. They will tabulate the inputs into different categories and even present it in a bar or pie chart for you. That is why I love tracking my expenditure now. In a glance, I can see what I need to cut down or which areas is going over budget.

You guys are disciplined. Way to go! It takes a lot of time to coordinate these things, especially when it comes to a combined effort to keep track of spending and budget. I'm impressed. Putting it up on a excel sheet takes up a lot of time. But I really like your idea of the fun spending. I remember reading it somewhere too.I must set aside some fun money too, even if it is just $10 a month.

I agree with you. You will not be able to create a budget if you are not able to tell how much you are spending on various things. You also made a very good point by stating that we all tend to underestimate our expenses. This is very true. First of all, we do not take into consideration yearly expenses eg, taxes, insurances (those paid yearly), travel expenses, etc. We seldom include these expenses into our monthly expenses. Secondly, we think we spend a certain amount but if we do not track them, we would not discover that we are actually spending more than that. If we track, we would know exactly. The other thing is about the act of tracking itself. Whenever I track my expenses, my expenses are kept in check. But when I don't track, I tend to overspend. SO I totally agree with you. Even though it would be good enough to track your expenses for one month, but I prefer to making tracking as part of my daily activity. You need to keep a close watch of our finances. That's important!

This activity of tracking personal expenses is an "on-and-off" activity. When I first started, I record everything in a tiny booklet. I find that rather tedious. I may do it for a month, but kinda lax the next month. The following month I completely forget about recording my expenses. Then when my expenses get a little out of hand or there is a change in my spending patterns, I scramble for my notebook again and start recording. However, since I started using an app on my smartphone, it was a breeze recording all of my personal expenses. It was easy for me to see in which category was I spending the most. However it does take some time to develop this habit of jotting down every single expense. I can understand how laziness can bring me back to my "lax" mode.

Wow! That's an achievement. One day, I'd like to tell everyone that I have been tracking every single expense for YEARS. At the moment, since I kept going on and off the tracking, I can only safely say that I have tracked for a 4 months. Anyway, keep it up!

You said you were in Singapore. Was it for a short period of time or you used to live in Singapore before? Yes, the high standards and costs of living in Singapore makes it more pertinent for us to track our expenses and watch our budget. Some people see that Singaporeans live a luxurious life, but in fact many of us continue to be burdened with large housing debts for most of our lives. If we do not continue to be employed, living in Singapore is going to be tough.