Face it most of us don’t know where our money is going. The simplest and easiest way to get a handle on what is happening each month is to track those daily, pesky purchases. Many of the clients that I have coached over the past three years found this exercise the most difficult! Why? Because they expected this daily drill of tracking to be difficult.  Trust me, people, this doesn’t have to be challenging. This isn’t like tracking a buffalo across the plains before you get dinner. This is just tracking the money that leaves your possession. Here are a few pointers that I have learned to make it easy. 

•  
  1. K.I.S.S: This small acronym single handedly keeps me from creating complex systems of tracking. What does it stand for? Keep it simple silly! Whatever system you use to track your expenses, please, please keep it simple. You don’t need a detailed map of every little penny and what it bought. What you are after is a spreadsheet that will allow you to see patterns in your spending behaviors so that you can delete those purchases that don’t give you value added for the money spent.

•  
  1. Change is good. Sometimes you create a system for tracking that just plain doesn’t work.  Remember you want to see your financial spending patterns so rather than totally giving up on tracking, change the system you use! Instead of saving up all your receipts to the end of the month and entering all of them in one block of time, why not spread the effort out by entering your expenses on a weekly basis. As for me, I have to enter my expenses daily; otherwise I’ll let them sit for a month or two before entering them.

•  
  1. Should you be the one entering the data? I have had many clients over the years tell me that one of the major stumbling blocks for them entering the daily expenses was they weren’t the ones that should be doing it. As soon as they gave the responsibility over to a spouse or older child, the expenses were soon being done quickly and effectively without the stress being upon their shoulders. All they had to do was make sure the information was available at the end of each week.

•  
  1. Never Give Up. The single best advice I can give on tracking expenses is never stop trying to find a simpler system or a better way. No matter how many times you try this exercise and end up getting frustrated with it, keep on tracking. Don’t worry about the past; just keep on recording and looking for patterns in your spending. As one mom told me, “Janine, I was all upset one month that I didn’t have as much money for groceries then I saw that we had spent over $450 on medical expenses!” That single bit of data was enough for her to see why she had run low on disposable income that month.

The quickest way to save money and lower your expenses is to know where your money is going. By having that information at hand, you can see the spending patterns of your life. How your spending is determined by your emotional state will also become clear to you. You will then be able to avoid or delay your impulse purchases or angry buying sprees because you have hunted down those elusive expenses and you are now purchasing items that are in line with your goals and reflect what you find most important in life.