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When it comes to money management, there are a number of ways to go about it. Financial institutions send us monthly statements, you can print all your account statements online, various software, Excel Spreadsheets, online money management websites (think Mint.ca) and of course the good old traditional way, paper & pen, you keep track of your own money.
I have two systems, that work well for me and keep track of my money. They’ve worked well for me, over the past months or ever since I truly got serious about eliminating my debt.
- Bi-Weekly Budget (For Every Pay-Period)
- Spending Notebook
My Bi-Weekly Budget consists of my fixed expenses and variable expenses. My fixed expenses are mortgage, car insurance, condo maintenance fee, monthly gas allowance and a few others. My variable expenses consist of cell phone, food, debt repayment and a few others. I keep track of this budget in my excel, type it all in, as it gets taken out of the account and every two weeks, I tally up the over/under. The difference gets spread between savings and debt repayment.
For my spending notebook, I drive around with it everywhere. Whatever I buy, be it via credit card, cash or debit, it gets written in this book. Once a month, I sit down and go through the numbers, see where most of my money went and than cut back on certain parts in the budget and possibly add money to other parts of the budget. In order to keep on track with the money budgeted (from the budget), I write it all down on a sticky and stick it to the front of the notebook as a reminder. Why as sticky you might ask? Because my budget changes bi-weekly, as I do enough tweaking to it.
I should also mention, that I have a third way of saving some money. I know it’s not really tracking my money, but in a way it is. I have a spare plastic change box. Since I started the debt elimination months ago, I don’t eat out as much or buy coffee for that matter, so all the loose change I used to keep in the car, now goes into this bin. I think in about 3 months, I have over $50 in coins. Which I will have to convert to paper bills and add it to the savings account.
I know my system MAY sounds complicated to you, but it’s not. It works for me, so that’s what matters. I am sure there are tons of other systems out there, but this is my niche and what works for me. When it comes to budgets and tracking money, there is no right or wrong, every-one’s situation is different. One thing that is needed for all is persistance. I’ve heard tons of excuses; “I can’t” is just being lazy, “I don’t have time” Well I guess your money is not as important to you, since you got time to go see a movie. Simply put, it’s not that one ”can’t”, its just that they “wont”.
What are some of your ideas on tracking money? Share it here and if we get enough in response, I will put them all up, maybe with link backs too. :)
My favourite way to keep track of my cash is using Moneystrands. I know there's mint.ca, but I prefer MoneyStrands. I use a credit union, and for some reason, it's not on Mint or Moneystrands, but it's way easier to add a manual account on Moneystrands. Plus there's an iPhone app that makes things really easy to track.
Beyond that, I do what you do with the excel spreadsheet. However, instead of keeping my book with me, I keep every receipt and tally that up at the end of the week. Like you, I do not eat out or buy coffee, but it's interesting to see how much you can spend on the necessities.
That's really good. I never heard of Moneystrands before. I should check it out, just to see what it's all about. I try not to use any of the websites, rather keep it simple. I just feel with the excel, pen/pad and website, it would be another layer for me.
We use Quicken. It reduces clutter, it's very easy to use, we can run any time of report we want, and it allows us to scan in our receipts. We have been using it for a minimum of 5 years now and I don't see us changing any time soon.