#Keep track of daily expenses update#
#Keep track of daily expenses free#

#Keep track of daily expenses update#

When we hold our monthly money dates, he gives an update if he thinks we’re going bananas in certain areas. This method is especially useful if you’re just getting started and have no idea where all your money is going.Įvery month he downloads his transactions into a spreadsheet (most online banking and credit card sites allow you to do this), then sorts by merchant and starts adding a label to each one – date night, concerts, gas, fast food lunches, dry cleaning, etc. If your concern isn’t so much making sure you’re not over-spending in the moment and more about just ensuring you’re not mindlessly indulging in certain areas, then try my husband’s method. Likewise, my colleague Greg’s family uses this method to keep grocery spending in check for their family of six.Ħ.

When another friend mentioned her embarrassment at how much she spent on cabs each month after adding it up, I suggested she try this and it worked! Since the majority of her rides were due to poor time management that didn’t allow for public transportation use, I had her put the amount she thought was reasonable to splurge on cabs in an envelope and when the envelope was empty, she had to take the bus or the train. I first heard about the envelope method back in 2004 when a friend of mine told me she kept a “car expenses” envelope in her kitchen cupboard, where she and her husband each tucked a one hundred dollar bill each month toward future car issues and eventually a new car purchase when they needed one. In fact, there are entire Facebook communities dedicated to picking apart the benefits and drawbacks of each, so I won’t get into those details, but if you want real-time updates on where your money is going, then an app may be your best method of tracking.ĥ. It’s a bit wonky at times (it labeled my nail salon as a liquor store, although I suppose they both fall in the same category of “do you really need to spend that?”) and my junk mail around personal loans and credit card offers jumped up suspiciously after signing up, but it’s easy to correct transactions that are incorrectly categorized and there are other dozens of options out there besides Mint.

#Keep track of daily expenses free#

The most popular app I hear mentioned is, which is free and connects to most of your accounts, allowing you to customize your budget and receive weekly alerts of your status. I still maintain this method to a certain extent to make sure that all our bills are accounted for and paid, although I no longer have to enter each and every charge into the “credit card balance due” cell.Ĥ. I kept a spreadsheet checking register that plotted out all my known bills ahead of time, while also keeping a running tally of my credit card balance to ensure that I didn’t charge more than I could pay off each month. This is the way I used to do it, when it was just me making spending decisions.

This way, we know that all the essentials will always be taken care of and the money in the separate account is “fun money,” where we just dial it back on spending when the balance gets low.ģ. We each contribute a set amount to this account each pay period, with the balance of our income going into separate checking accounts that we use for spending money. We have one checking account where all our bills are paid, including non-monthly things like condo association fees, life insurance and estimated taxes. This is what I call the “lazy person’s” budget and is part of the way we do it.