Track Your Spending
About two years ago, before we used a spending plan template, we struggled to stay within our monthly budget. We could see all our purchases on our credit card app, and everything seemed reasonable. We weren’t running through shopping malls, wildly throwing cash into every doorway like if Santa procrastinated until Christmas Eve. But it wasn’t adding up.
We needed more information—just like tracking calories to lose weight, just like getting data for a scientific experiment. So on the first of the month, we started writing down every single purchase on a physical piece of paper, like we were from the past or something. We wrote down every purchase we made in the corresponding budget category on our tracker. We checked out credit card app every day for automatic payments and things we forgot.
And you know what we found? There wasn’t one single thing that was throwing us off. But as the month went on, we made some small changes to our spending plan. We cancelled a subscription we’d forgotten about. We added up how much we were spending at the coffee shop every week (we refuse to be embarrassed about this number) and bought ourselves a nice coffee machine. It paid for itself within a month. We stopped ourselves from making a few mindless purchases.
When we repeated the process the next month, it was easier. We’ve done it every month since, and our finances have never been better.
Spending Plan Template
So here’s your challenge! This month, write down everything you spend on a piece of paper—a spending plan worksheet of sorts. Don’t forget the small stuff, including the coffees and spare change, and definitely don’t forget the big stuff, such as the checks for bills and automatic deductions from your paycheck.
Your entries don’t have to be long—just the amount you spent and what you spent it on. Try keeping this monthly expenses template by your bed and jotting down your notes after you brush your teeth. Make it a habit.
Before you get to work on your spending habits, you need to know exactly what they are. This is how you’re going to get that data!
You can use our spending tracker printable if you’d like! Or get yourself a blank notebook and write out your own categories.
At the end of the month, or even as you go, ask yourself some questions:
What’s good here? What aligns with your values and makes you proud?
What’s surprising?
Find an easy win: a subscription to cancel or a coffee machine to buy.
Find a longer term goal that would improve this spread. (One of ours was paying off some debt to reduce interest payments, for example.)
Repeat with a new spending plan template the following month, and compare your results. (This is how we discovered that on the months we used a couponing app, we actually spent more on groceries. How is that even possible?) And don’t forget to celebrate your progress!