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Track Your Expenses in a Simple Spreadsheet and Find Money You Didn’t Know You Had

December 23, 2007

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You need to track where you spend your money. Why do you think that is the first question financial advisers ask you when you turn to them for help? If you can enter numbers to a simple Excel spreadsheet, you can track your spending, and once you know where your money is going, you are well on your way to having more money to spend. Yes, you’ll find money you didn’t know you had. Managing your money doesn’t take much time and it will make your life so much easier.

The thing that’s different about this spreadsheet is that you can see all expenditures by category for a month, all on one page, along with totals by category. It’s easy to see exactly where your money is going. And the computer does all the math.

1. Download the free budget spreadsheet from http://www.forhonor.com/downloads.html and save it on your computer as Expenses2008.xls. There are more articles with more detailed instructions that you can also print.

The Excel workbook contains:

  • A page of instructions - You can change category titles.
  • A page with example expenses entered - You can put a description or date under the expense.
  • A page for each month, January through December
  • A total page that adds all the numbers from January through December

2. Every time you spend money, just type the amount in the column under the proper category, such as housing, automobile, groceries, restaurant, medical, etc.

3. Some simple procedures:

  • Enter you expenditures as soon as you can after parting ways with your money. Put the receipts beside your computer as soon as you get home so you won’t forget or delay.
  • Don’t worry about tracking every penny. Just do the best you can.
  • Never set up an “other” category because you will never know where this money went.
  • For credit card, debit card, and check purchases: 1) Always enter the total purchase under just one category, such as “grocery,” so that you can easily match this number to bank and credit card statements when you look at them to make sure you entered all your expenditures. 2) Then, in the next cell under this grocery column, enter a minus number for whatever amount was not grocery, such as laundry soap. It’s easy to do the sales tax calculation in the cell when you enter it. 3) Finally, enter the amount for the laundry soap under the “personal care” column.
  • For regular/predictable cash expenses, don’t try to track them every time you spend the money. You just won’t do it. If you know you give the kids about $5 a day for lunch money, just enter ($5 times the number of school days in the month times the number of kids) under the “restaurant” category once a month and forget about it. Do the same thing for cash parking fees, allowances, coffee at work, etc.
  • Don’t track the credit card bill payment, because you have already entered each item charged. But do enter the interest or fee charges under “business expense.”
  • For regular, same amount, withholdings from your paycheck for medical, charity and life insurance, enter them into all 12 months in the spreadsheet and then forget about them unless the amount changes. You may want to track savings as a business expense just to force yourself to put money into savings.
  • Do not track taxes or social security in this spreadsheet. It’s too difficult, and you can’t do anything about them anyway.

4. Track all these expenses.

Cash

Money withheld from paycheck

Automatic payments/deductions from bank accounts or credit cards

Bank and credit card fees and penalties

Check cashing fees

Checks written

Debit card expenditures

Credit card charges

Refunds or returns. Enter these as negative expenses under the proper category.

5. Once you know where your money is going, start looking for ways to reduce spending on things you don’t want. You’ll have more money for things you do need and want, such as putting more money into savings. See www.forhonor.com today.

by Donna Jaske

Written by · Filed Under Advise, Finance, Money 

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