I’ve been diligently managing my personal finances and tracking household expenses for more than 20 years.
How diligent, you ask?
Well, I can tell you that my cable bill in February 1998 was $8.03, and that I spent $141.16 in 2006 for an annual subscription to the Los Angeles Times.
I can also verify with total certainty that 7 percent of my income in 2007 went towards groceries, and vouch that I spent $88.95 at my local K-Mart in August 2001. Just don’t ask me what for, because I’m not that thorough with my record keeping.
Why Tracking Expenses Is Important
Taking the time to track and analyze your income and where it’s going is a crucial element of managing your personal finances. That’s because doing so uncovers hidden money leaks that help you better allocate your resources, thereby ensuring you always get the most out your paycheck.
It makes it easier to set financial goals too.
Of course, prior to tracking your expenses, you have to record them.
While not impossible, trying to track all your cash purchases can be extremely tedious and time-consuming. On the other hand, everything purchased on your credit and debit cards are automatically recorded and available for review online or as part of your monthly billing statements — which is why I use credit cards for as much as I possibly can.
As for keeping tabs on how you spend your money, there are a panoply of options available.
Now I realize many people are initially attracted to sites like Mint, OneBudget, Adaptu, and MyBudget-Online because their automation features essentially make the job of tracking your money almost effortless. The trouble is, in the world of personal finance I believe too much automation can be a curse. That’s because when money management tools become too user-friendly, a lot of folks have very little incentive to understand the data being made available to them.
For the financially undisciplined, over time that’s a surefire recipe for failure.
The Big Advantage of Spreadsheets
For me, the more old-school hands-on approach is the only way to go; I use my own custom-designed Excel spreadsheet because it forces me to actively manage my personal finances. It also gives me more control than using a web-based site like Mint.
In fact, every January I give my readers a peek at some of that spreadsheet’s top-level graphs and financial breakdowns in my annual State of the Household post.
True, a spreadsheet is not as sexy as automated money-tracking web-based applications, but it’s the same tried-and-true method I’ve been successfully using to track my income, net worth and expenses for more than 15 years now.
Here’s a just a small portion of the Excel worksheet for my household expenses in 1999:
Although the custom Excel spreadsheet I developed was quite simple in the beginning, it has grown in detail and complexity over the years, with pie charts and graphs that clearly show the results of our household spending and current trending patterns.
Today, my spreadsheet breaks out our household expenses into 13 major categories and 50 subcategories. The major categories include:
- Loans
- Utilities
- Medical & Dental
- Automobile Expenses
- Groceries
- House Expenses (excluding the mortgage)
- Entertainment
- Taxes
- ATM Withdrawals
And A Few More Quick Tips …
- If you’re just starting out, it’s important to make sure you set aside about an hour or so at least once per month for reviewing your checkbook, receipts, and/or credit card statements and recording your expenses in your spreadsheet.
- By frequently updating your financial spreadsheet, you’ll not only be able to quickly catch any potential errors on your billing statements, but you’ll also keep from falling hopelessly behind on your record keeping duties.
- If you’re not an expert in Excel, there’s no need for despair; Microsoft has scores of budgeting worksheet templates for your to download and modify to suit your needs. In fact, their “personal budget worksheet” template has been downloaded over 3.6 million times.
- If you’ve never used a spreadsheet, don’t be intimidated — they’re not hard to use! Yes, spreadsheets are extremely powerful tools for those who know how to take advantage of all they have to offer. But for most folks, the basics needed to properly track expenses can be learned in less than 30 minutes.
- If you don’t want to spend money on a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel, you can try the free equivalent from OpenOffice. I’ve used OpenOffice before and it’s an extremely capable alternative. You can also take advantage of the free personal finance templates provided by Google Docs.
- Once you’ve effectively disciplined yourself to always spend less than you earn, tracking expenses becomes a viable alternative to budgeting that allows you to focus on optimizing your finances in order to get the most bang for your buck.
- And last but not least, remember this: In the end, it doesn’t really matter what tool you use. What is important is your commitment to actively manage your finances.
Photo Credit: PeaGreenGirl
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Excellent post. I agree with your point about some of the great online tools like Mint.com making it too easy and not forcing users to fully understand the data. Maybe its my longtime background of using spreadsheets but I still prefer them for many tasks.
I tend to use them for everything to, Roger. As you and I both know, they can be used for a lot more things than finances; even stuff completely unrelated to math.
Spreadsheets are amazing — and very powerful — tools.
Damn engineers and their OCDness….You make me feel guilty…
I know, Dr. Dean. We engineers just can’t help ourselves.
I originally used excel but switched to quicken when I found a free version laying around my apartment. I have no clue how it got there! I input all of my expenses manually and can look up reports for anything I have entered. I just need to make sure I back it up regularly…
Haha, you’re right – even us Type As avoid entering cash transactions in their Mint accounts (and I have at least one account that won’t update through Mint). I do make it a point to log into Mint twice a month to figure out if anything weird is going on…
Right on, Len. I know a lot of folks cringe at the perceived tedium of tracking expenses, but I agree with you: It’s the foundation of household financial planning, crucial, when combined with a budget, to meeting short, medium, and long term goals. The most important thing is to choose a tool, any tool, dive in and get started!
I use Excel for us too. I only started about 6 years ago though, so it is not nearly as impressive.
My way is a lot simpler than the look of yours though. I have a column that lists categories, a column that lists the budgeted amount we are supposed to stick to, and a column for how much we actually spent…sometimes it’s a yay and somtimes it is a bummer…
I didn’t want to get into the dirty details of mine, Crystal, because I didn’t want to scare anybody off. But my spreadsheet slices and dices the household expenses, as the saying goes, six ways to Sunday. I’ve got about 25 different worksheets covering every year of expenses, plus summary sheets, pie charts, line graphs and other goodies. Only an accountant or engineer would really appreciate it.
Everyone else would just call it overkill!
lol
Being an accountant, I definitely approve of and appreciate your spreadsheet, Len.
Please share the spreadsheet from 1999. It should be the most basic.
I have a question, Len. When you enter your totals into your Excel workshop for say groceries, do you enter the amount you paid plus the sales tax, or do you leave the tax out and put it in a separate category?
The taxes, if any, are included in everything, Belinda.
Thank you!
I think we use what you are familiar with or good at. I have used a spreadsheet for so long , I fall into it out of habit.
The spreadsheet is great because you can easily summarize columns and link numbers from tab to tab to compare month to month.
We recently switched to just a standard spreadsheet to track our expenses (instead of using quicken/mint), because it really holds us accountable to see the debits and credits side by side in realtime.
Spreadsheets are still the most used tool for most of the businesses. As a matter of fact still around 85% of financial sector uses spreadsheets.
Off late the demand for spreadsheets have drastically gone up. With the entrants such as CollateBox http://www.collatebox.com/ the stage is set pretty big, I have been privileged to use Collatebox for managing and tracking sales n finances n am enjoying the tool.
I use Excel also. It works for me. I think what’s important is whether you’re comfortable using it.
How about this one from CollateBox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-N0mRNVrfM for spreadsheet, with awesome data summary n visualization?
@LenPenzo your thoughts?
“…a *panoply* of options”??
Panoply (noun): a wide-ranging and impressive array or display…
Apparently, it also means “a complete suit of armor”.
I like using a spreadsheet too because of the control. Plus I can really customize it. You are absolutely right—you will discover your money leaks. After reading one of your comments, it sounds like you have your own system of creating spreadsheets!
Len, I also use excel to track my expenses. I built mine around a main check register that will account for up to 10 bank accounts. It then aggregates everything into a budget sheet and has a few charts and other goodies. I would be very interested in seeing your spreadsheet. I am always looking for ways to further “geek” my spreadsheet out. Would you be willing to share a blank version of your spreadsheet with your audience? Thanks and keep up the good work!
I can do that, Matt. It’s going to take me a bit of time to “sanitize” it though — I’ll work on that this weekend and try to get it to you as soon as I can.
Thank you!
I’d be interested too in a generic version to see how you split things out. Thanks!
Len,
Any luck on sanatizing your budget worksheet? I am still interested.
Thanks!
I have to beg for your patience, Matt. It’s on my to-do list. I’ve just been really busy. I hope to get to it not to long after I get back from FINCON.
Oh and by the way, I am an accountant, so I really do appreciate this sort of thing!
I’ve used Microsoft Money for more than a decade now for my personal finances and love it. As it’s a sunset product (no longer supported or developed) you can also download it for free from Microsoft.
Nice write-up.
I use Excel too. I have a smart phone and the file is in Google Doc. Each time I spend I just write it in the spreadsheet and I clean everything up once a week.
The problem is my partner who instead of having a smart phone – refuses to do so.
I bought a day planner for 99 cents and use the month pages to track all of my daily spending that is not regular bills (since January). It makes me really aware of what I am spending money on. But I use Quicken for weekly check-in’s of my regular expenses.
Hi Len, I signed up for your newsletter approx. 20mins ago. Enjoyed what I read/scanned as I had a quick look around. Came across this post & found it interesting. One thing I like to do, which I know is rather simple, however it gives me peace of mind, is manage my outgoings/cash flow. I HATE any bills that turn up that are a SURPRISE. As we all know household bills incl. mortgage/car/insurances etc. are relentless. What I like to to do is auto-pay everything weekly, so I don’t even have to think about it. So I just calculate the yearly cost of anything & everything, divide by 52 (weeks) & that is what I auto-pay each week to everyone. (don’t ask any providers ‘can I do it’, just do it – they won’t knock the money back). That way when any regular bill/account arrives I’m normally in credit with them at least a few dollars. Since reading this post however, I’ve added another row item to the spreadsheet & called it ‘Savings’, so hereon in each week I’ll be paying myself also without thinking about it. Sorry if this is all really simple stuff, it’s just that for me I love simple solutions w/good outcomes.
I’ve been using Mint.com for sometime to track my expenses. But after reading this, I think, I need to use spreadsheet for the same!
Thanks!
For my budgeting I use “You Need a Budget” or YNAB for short. It has the benefits you get from using a spreadsheet that you have to enter in your expenses as you go. YNAB saves you from having to get the spreadsheet to properly manage categories and budgeting. The greatest thing about YNAB is that it has a great facility to allow you to budget for the future. Too often we are spending our time trying to track the expenses of the past. But only once you are able to budget for and influence future spending decisions do you get the greatest benefit. The other thing I like about YNAB is that they teach a budgeting method and the software helps you to implement that method correctly. I’ve used mint.com and excel in the past and now that I’m using YNAB I don’t plan on going back.
I use a similar Excel format and added columns that list the interest rate on the credit accounts. That way I can make extra payments on the highest interest accounts.
Have a question..how do you account for line items on your sheet like clothing, household items, bills that are part of your monthly credit card bill without duplicating the charges on both line items. It seems confusing to me – this is because i have credit card debt that i am trying to pay off and carrying the balance forward every month is muddling it up.
Thanks
Ami
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