Tracking December spending

[kathirynne]

I've read that the best way to tighten your budget is to keep track of where you spend your money for a month.

I've decided to track my spending for December (traditionally my most expensive month) in an effort to figure out where to cut back. Anyone care to join me?


1 December:
Gas for car..........$23.39
Rent...................$750.00

2 December:
Groceries (for 2 weeks)..........$163
(I think there is probably room for improvement here, but it works out to $2.32 per day per person, so it's not horrible.)

[Amys1st]

Main you're way ahead of me!! You can also track your spending by using the software quicken and it can dump your bank statements and cc statements into it for you. You can also set up a cash acct.

I have always done this. Where are you needing help??

[kathirynne]

I suppose I'm mostly just curious why my budget on paper seems workable, but IRL, my ends don't meet.

I'm hoping that by writing down EVERYthing, I will spot places to cut back.

[Eli's_mommy]

I'm doing this also (see blog in siggy). I'm not counting gas though, because you can't do much about how much gas costs. I've cut waaaay back, and so far this month I've spent about $32. I can do better though...

[SusannahM]

I found it more helpful for me to break it down further, rather than broad categories. Breaking it down by product worked best for me. So, I could see exactly how much I could save by baking my own bread, drinking water instead of a drink at a restaurant, etc. Little things like that were always a lot easier to accomplish. I'm happy with the level of spending we are at currently. I think any more cutting back and we would start to feel deprived, which I think would be a mistake for us to do, since already we're saving over 1/2 of DH's take-home pay.

[kathirynne]

I'm counting gas, because I want to keep track of every penny. (And see how long I can go between fill-ups.)

SusannahM, do you mean that instead of "Groceries", you would list every single thing you bought at the store? (That is a great idea. I'll try that next time I shop.)

[SusannahM]

Yes, that's what I mean. I tried just doing categories at first, but it really didn't help me much. I couldn't really see where I could trim costs that way. I still ended up with categories, but they were kind of hierarchical, like groceries, then divided up into fruit, vegetables, meat, junk, etc, then those were divided up so I could see individual items. It only really took a few weeks to start seeing where we could really save money. Then, I took a break to implement some of the things. I'm going to start up again pretty soon when the holidays are over to see again, I know right now where we're slipping anyway since it's the holidays and I've been way overstressed, we've been buying too much convenience food because I've been lax with my menu planning