Keep track of cash

Posted by Hank in Budgeting & Frugal Finance

I didn’t like to write down every time I spent money.

Then I made a discovery. If you find it hard to keep track of where you spend your money, there’s an easy way.

This is how I keep track of spending without writing anything down on paper.

If you use your plastic bank card for all your spending then you’ll leave a spending track that is easy to follow just like animal footprints in the sand.

• Buy everything with a bank card – not cash. Use a debit card for online purchase. Destroy your credit card.
• Let the card statement keep track of your expenses.
• If you have a credit card (e.g. VISA), pay it off in full, before it is due, every month. No Visa, no worry.
• Every 3 days or so, go into internet banking.
• Select then copy your transactions for the past 3 days.
• Paste them into a blank Microsoft XL worksheet.
• Add details about each purchase while you still remember them. More than 3 days and I forget what I spent.
• At the end-of-month, save the work-sheet.
• Name your worksheet. e.g. ACCOUNTS-Feb-2012.xls
• Keep a different XL file for each month.
• Use a different worksheet for each account, all in the same file for that month.