How to track your expenses

There’s not a right or wrong answer when it comes to tracking your expenses. The basic way to keep track of your financial information is to plug it in to google sheets or an excel spreadsheet. But where can you find all of your expenses?

Let’s get into it:

1. Account statements

Thankfully, credit-card companies keep track of this information for us. Every transaction that occurs through our credit card, they have a short description of what you might’ve bought and the company you bought it from. Oh, and the amount of course. You’ll get a statement at the end of that period (it varies per company/card) which will include all of your transactions for that period. Your bank statements also include these fixtures as well, which includes your deposits and withdrawals. If you use a debit card your transactions will pop up here as well.

Your spending will be a mixture of fixed and variable expenses. Your fixed expenses are the things you have little control over, and they’ll occur every month like grocery expenses. Variable expenses are the ones you can adjust like travel and entertainment.

2. Categorizing your expenses

Just like a business, group your expenses into different categories to understand where your largest expenditures are and where they are least. Everybody is different, so this will help you determine exactly where your money is going.

As mentioned before, your account statements might have these pre-organized in their own categories which can help you in categorizing. We’ll identify these categories later on.

3. Use budgeting apps

There are some budgeting apps that’ll help you keep track of your income and expenses. Helping you track and budget your expenses through a couple of clicks, Intuit Mint is a great one that links with your accounts to pull in updated data. If you’re interested in other ones, NerdWallet identified some of the best expense tracking apps in this article here -> (8 Best Personal Expense Tracker Apps of 2024 – NerdWallet)

4. Follow the 50-30-20 Rule

The 50-30-20 rule works like this, 50% is for your needs, 30% is for your wants, and 20% is for your savings. Simple right?! Let’s further breakdown each category:

Needs: 50%

The expenses you can’t avoid, they consist of:

• Housing
• Transportation – (gas, car maintenance)
• Health care
• Life insurance
• Utilities – (electricity, heat, water, garbage, internet, cell-phone, land-line)
• Groceries – (food, toiletries, haircuts)
• Child-care, child support, alimony
• Minimum payments on debt: credit cards, student loans, and other loans

Wants: 30%

Whatever you want to buy – whatever you’re interested in, this section is for you!

Here’s some ideas:

• Clothing
• Dining out and any other special meals
• Alcohol/vapes/cigarettes
• Movie, concert and other event tickets
• Gym or club memberships
• Travel expenses (airline-tickets, hotels, rental cars, etc.)
• Other entertainment (TV subscriptions, video-games)
• Home Décor
• Investing in your education!

Savings: 20%

The most important of them all, this is meant for putting money towards your retirement, your emergency fund for a rainy day, and for paying down any of your debt.

Here’s what you should be putting your money into:

• Emergency fund
• Savings account
• 401 (k)
• Roth or Traditional IRA’s
• Personal Investment portfolios
• Any extra money you can put towards your debt payments.

While there’s no-one size fit’s all solution for what works for everyone. Finding what works best for you is what’s most important, try and if you don’t like it, try something else.

Managing/tracking your finances is something everyone needs to do to some degree. I recommend starting with an excel spreadsheet, you can work your way up to a more advanced solution after that!

Remember! It’s your money, your responsibility.

See you next week 😊