August 27, 2023 • 26 mins
Most do not keep track of spending, which is when problems can and will start. Too much debt is cause by spending too much money and unaware of that problem.
Article Links:
https://www.myhubble.money/blog/the-benefits-of-tracking-your-spending-habits
https://www.lifehack.org/482228/5-surprising-benefits-of-tracking-your-spending By Sharen Ross
https://oboloo.com/blog/the-importance-of-keeping-track-of-expenses/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:04):
Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck, I retired accountant
turned truck driver, I reduce mydebt in a relatively short
period of time, debt reductionto achieve financial freedom
takes commitment, confidence,determination.
(00:24):
Benefits of tracking, most donot keep track of spending,
which is when problems can andwill start. Too much debt is
caused by spending too muchmoney. And unaware of that
problem.
I have links in my show notes tothree articles
(00:45):
that you can refer to thatbefore I get started, I'd like
to recommend you go to happygiraffe.com, which I have a link
in my show notes will take youright to where they have a
spreadsheet. If you had problemsin the past doing a budget, this
(01:06):
is a different way to do it. Andthey figure out how much money
you have available to spend. Soif then if you can keep track of
your spending, you know how muchmoney you have available at that
particular point in time. BeforeI get into the benefits of
(01:26):
spending. I found this articlethat did a survey of 100 people
who use spreadsheets, andthey've used a did some tracking
of their personal finances forat least three months. And this
is what that survey came up with93% agree you have a better
(01:49):
insight into your spendinghabits. That is definitely a
benefit. Not the second one was80% agree, you have a better
relationship with your spouse orpartner. If you both are on the
same page, and you are tracking,you know what's going on, and
(02:13):
you both agree to it, yes,you're going to have a better
overall relationship. When youdon't have financial issues,
you're going to have a betterrelationship. 79% agree you
spend less impulsively or youspend less than possibly because
you know you have bills comingdue and you may not have enough
(02:35):
money to cover it. So you'recutting back your spending. It's
a good thing. Number 480 1%Agree, he'll be more confident
about reaching your financialgoals. Yes, you know what's
going on in your finances,that's definitely gonna give you
more confidence and reachinggoals that you may or may not
(02:56):
have set that for now. If you'restruggling to pay down debt, one
of your goals should be to payoff your credit cards, or pay
off Hall your high interestloans, whatever they may be 75%
agree you feel less anxietyabout money. Yeah, you know
what's going on, you know thatyou have bills do you know money
(03:18):
is coming in? Yeah, you won't beas anxious. There's only a
couple ways you can reduce yourdebt. And the first way is
increase your income. But formost of us that's hard to do.
Maybe get a second job, maybe dosomething on the side, whatever.
(03:39):
If you can do that, thatdefinitely gonna help once you
get your spending under control,because you'll have more money
to apply to your emergency fund.
So it'll build faster, andyou'll be able to apply more
money to your debt at a soonerrate. So the benefits of
tracking your spending habits,as the first one is identifying
(04:02):
unnecessary expenses. If you'rerecording all your expenses on a
regular basis, and you'relooking at your bank account,
and you're putting it in aseparate program, and an app on
your computer. This is why youdo that. Because when you go to
(04:22):
your bank account and look tosee what your expenses what that
came out, he had something mightpop up there that was
automatically deducted from yourchecking account that you forgot
about. That's identifyingunnecessary expenses. Tracking
your expenses help you identifyareas where you're spending too
much money. It allows you toidentify Spence's that can be
(04:46):
cut back such as dining out toofrequently, or buying expensive
clothes. For example, if you seeor spending a significant amount
of money on takeout food, youYou can start cooking at home
more often and save money.
The second benefit, promotingbetter financial planning am
(05:10):
budgeting are how you're goingto plan for something, or budget
for something. If you don't knowwhere your money is gone, or how
much or your money is gone toany particular place, it's gonna
be really difficult. By trackingyour spending, you can get a
clearer picture of yourfinancial situation. This helps
(05:31):
you create a budget and planyour finances better. When you
have a clearer idea of how muchmoney are coming in and going
out, you can allocate your fundsbetter pay off that and save for
future expenses, then a thirdreason benefit helping to
achieve financial goals.
Tracking your expenses can helpyou achieve your financial
(05:52):
goals. For instance, if you havea goal to buy a new car, you can
track expenses and cut back onunnecessary expenses to save
money for your purchases. Andthat's the same for reducing
your debt. If you're trackingyour spending, and you realize
that you spent too much on ahobby, you can cut back because
(06:14):
you know your what you're doingwrong, where your money has
gone, where maybe it shouldn'tbe going. So you can then make
changes to your spending, andthen help reach your goals much
better. For enabling bettercontrol of your finance course
more control, the more you knowwhat's going on in your
(06:37):
financial life, the more controlyou have pretty simple, five
detecting and preventing fraud.
And that's important. That's oneof the reasons I do it. If you
track things that come inthrough your checking account,
and through your credit cards,when a charge shows up that you
(07:00):
didn't make or not familiarwith, or your significant other.
And you both are not sure whatthat expense was. Now I've done
this, and forgotten where Imight have spent some money a
day or two later. And maybe theplace where I spend the money
was a different name, and thenlet the name is showing up. And
(07:23):
then I kind of had to thinkabout it for a while. And if the
dollar amount matches what Ithought I spent, then I know I'm
good. But if I can't identifyit, I contact her credit card, I
say there's a charge on myaccount that I'm not sure about.
And they research it, they mightissue me you know, cancel that
(07:44):
card and issue a new card. Andthe methods is, well pen and
paper, I highly suggest you useyour personal computer at home,
either on a spreadsheet ordownload an app. There's a lot
of them out there. Some do morethan others, some cost more than
(08:05):
others, like the one I'm using,which is count about.com, I
don't get any money or refer forrefer unless I get nothing. But
it's less than $10 a year. Andif you don't use all the options
in it, it's like $9.95 a year,it comes out as painless and it
(08:26):
does a great job. And theyalready have your categories set
up for you. So that's a lot ofwork you don't even have to
think about or do. He just gotto look through the category
list and select the ones youwant to use. Now they're in
alphabetical order. And they'renot in any particular order. As
(08:49):
far as natural gas bill,electric bill being under
Utilities that might just benatural gas, electricity, I
might be all by itself, I wouldgroup those under the heading of
utilities would be my masteraccount. And then the
electricity and natural gastrash collected. Water and Sewer
(09:15):
would be sub accounts. If youknow anything about it, you know
what I'm talking about. If youget into it and you don't know
what I'm talking about, once youget into it and start learning
that you'll figure it out. It'sreally easy. Now once you start
entering data, the data is onlyas good as how you enter it. So
(09:38):
you have to be consistent whenyou're entering your data. When
you go to a grocery store storeand buy things. If 80% plus of
it is for groceries, then youcategorize that whole thing
under groceries. If you go tothe grocery store and you buy
(09:59):
gasolinemean, make sure you split that
out on our transportation,gasoline fuel or whatever you
use it, or you'll mess up yourgrocery account as far as the
dollar amounts. And that comesin important later on. Once you
set up your control centercontrol center as a budget, for
(10:20):
those of you that hasn'tlistened to me, I referred to
the budget as a control center,because it helps you control
your finances. Tracking is yourlifeline, it tells you
everything that you're doing ona day to day basis. If you keep
up your entry or data entry, itdoesn't take long, if you do it
(10:46):
once a week, five to 10 minutes,the penny how many transactions
if you have a lot oftransactions, do it twice a
week, and they'll get quicker asyou go. And the longer you use
the program. Whenever you type aname of something in there, and
it's gonna pop up the category,it's going to be right 90% of
(11:09):
the time, he just changed thedate,
put in the dollar amount, andyou're done. So it doesn't
really take a whole lot. Andonce you got your information in
there, you can generate reportsthat you can use all these
things is a benefit fortracking, automatic tracking
(11:35):
through banks and credit cards.
Another way to track yourexpenses is through automated
tracking out my bank doesn't doit. If they do they probably
charge too much. And tips foreffective tracking of spending
habits. Set realistic financialgoals, well be realistic on
paying off your debt. That meanthat's that's realistic, keep
(11:57):
track of all expenses, no matterhow small. If you charge
something that costs 10 cents,you'd have to enter it because
it's in your balance, how you'regoing to reconcile the balance.
If you don't ever, ever entereverything that you're spending
money on no matter the dollaramount. Categorize expenses for
(12:21):
better analysis. Yes, it'salready set up in most of these
apps and track all of them.
Review spending regularly andadjust accordingly. Reviewing
your spending regularly helpsyou identify any changes and
your spending habits. This helpsyou adjust your budget
(12:43):
accordingly. To ensure that youstay on track with your
financial goals. Granite there'ssome spending gonna do is the
same every month, rent,mortgage, car payments,
groceries, fuel for theautomobile, utilities for the
home, that's got to beconsistent, hopefully close to
(13:06):
the same amount. month in andmonth out. The things you have
to watch out is spending foronce things you want, but don't
necessarily need. Like newclothes, you might be able to
get by with the clothes youhave, but you want something
that looks nicer. You wantsomething newer for whatever the
(13:28):
case would be. So that would bea once. That is where you need
to control your spending. Youcan also control your spending
on how you eat you how you useyour spend your money on your
needs, you need food to eat, youcan go to the grocery store and
(13:52):
buy food and cook it at homeyourself. Or you can go to a
restaurant and dine out or youcan go pick up carry out or you
can order it online and have itdelivered. Which of those
options the cheapest the grocerystore is going to be the
cheapest. The most expensive isto have it delivered to your
(14:14):
home already prepared.
Because you got to pay for thefood and you have to pay for the
delivery cost nothing is free inlife.
So you need to cut back on thehome delivery part of it and
maybe dine out last have don'thave anything delivered to your
home. And if you want a pizza,go pick it up yourself. We're
(14:39):
looking for ways to save moneyto reduce your spending. That is
what tracking can help you bylooking at your past history for
the last 30 days of the items inyour food category. For this
example, you can see where yourmoney was going
(15:00):
They can now go forward, makingan adjustment and your
lifestyle, spending becomes ahabit. Saving can become a
habit. But a habit takes time toform and a habit is hard to
break. So you have to focus. Andthat is a benefit of tracking.
(15:24):
And he's I got one more articletells you of how keeping track
expenses helped the budgetingsense it enables you allocate
funds for essential items, suchas rents, build grocery
transportation, those are allwhat needs before spending on
anything else by having aclearer picture of how much
money is coming in, versus howmuch is going out, you're better
(15:46):
equipped at making informeddecisions. Okay, it's third
arco, you can use software orapps, that's what I recommend,
categories your spending, keepyour receipts, instead of going
online and looking something upfor you have to go to your bank
account, and which time out, yougo to your credit card, which
(16:08):
will tie me out if you keep thephysical receipts and just enter
the data from the paperreceipts. So that you can get
used to doing that I did thatfor years. And tracking is
nothing more than keepingarrestor way back when I was in
high school. And college, if youhad a checking account,
(16:31):
everybody kept a check register,if you're smart, the bank gave
you a register when you startit. And then I thought I think
when you bought checks, theywould send a register with it.
And you just keep filling out.
And it was just a runningbalance of, of what was in your
(16:51):
checking account. And when youbought something, you record the
date, where you bought it, thedollar amount and maybe a memo,
when you got a deposit, yourecord the money that was
deposited. That's the only thingyou're doing the same thing. But
you're not doing this pencil andpaper, you're doing it in the
computer. And it's a whole loteasier. That's all this is, but
(17:16):
you're doing a roster for yourchecking account for your
savings account. And for everycredit card. If you have loans
that you pay on the regularbasis, you're doing it for all
those loans, even if the onlything you're looking at is a
payment payment payment month inand month out. So when you look
at it, you can glance through itand see if you missed the
(17:38):
payment, you can glance at tosee if you made a payment maybe
one day late, whatever the case,you have your own written
history of what's going on andyour finances. There is an app
that I kind of watched a YouTubeevery once in a while. It's a
pretty good one. It's whyyou need a budget. Why and a B?
(17:59):
It's a very good application, itdoes tracking, it does a
budgeting and it does more thanthat. If you're interested,
check it out. Why an A B, I getno referrals whatsoever from
them. They don't even know Iexist. Probably check it out. I
(18:20):
think it's somewhat expensive,about $15 a year. But I had a
listener contact me and saidthey were happy I mentioned it
in my podcast, because they'vebeen using it and they love it.
So if you can't afford it, doit. If you have nothing to
(18:40):
spare, then you have to do thisstuff manually. If the only
thing you can do is listen to apodcast, you don't have a
computer, you don't have aspreadsheet, then you have to do
it pencil and paper and getstarted right away. If you're
doing it that way, that's gonnatake a lot more time. But it's
(19:04):
definitely worth the effort. Nomatter how you do it. I'll be
back in one moment with my finalthoughts.
If you're interested andlearning about an online
software that helped myself getout of debt,
it does tracking, budgeting, andkeeps track of all your assets
(19:27):
and all your debt and even tellsyou how much and when to
transfer money into your savingsaccount and how much and when to
transfer money to your debt andwhich debts to pay off in order.
First. It's not cheap. It's aone time payment. But it will
(19:48):
definitely be an investmentsomething and yourself and an
investment in your personalfinancial life. If you're
interested sendMay an e mail at reduced debt
increase well@gmail.com. AndI'll send you the information
about this online software thatworked great for me. For those
(20:11):
of you as a debt problem, forthose of you who had goals set,
and you reach your goals in yourthinking, I no longer have to do
tracking, I no longer have tokeep my control center up to
date, well, you will be wrong,you must continue to do this,
(20:31):
even when you achieve all yourgoals, whether you're paying off
debt, trying to achieve sometype of saving goals, you must
continue doing this the rest ofyour life, keeping track of your
finances is number one, doing acontrol center will be number
two, even when you achieveeverything you think you need to
(20:56):
achieve, you must continue doingthis, or your spending will get
out of control again. So to keepyourself under control at all
times for the rest of your life.
As long as you're doing your ownfinances, you must keep on
(21:19):
tracking all your income, andall of your expenses, and then
putting that into your controlcenter each and every month
going forward so that you cansee where your finances are
changing from time to time, ifyou don't continue to do this,
(21:39):
you'll fall back into oldhabits, which is generally
spending more money than youmake. And that is the number one
problem everybody in America oreven worldwide has. So by
tracking everything you do,through all your credit cards
through your checking account,your savings account, wherever
(22:03):
you are putting your money inand out of the need to be
tracking all those accounts.
Why? Because of the benefits itgives you. It keeps your
spending under control, andidentifies problems, and
identifies if there's any fraudproblems on any of your
accounts. If somebody hackedinto your credit card account,
(22:24):
and start spending money thatyou don't know about, if you're
tracking on a regular basis,you'll see it right away, he
could put a stop to it, you cancancel that card and get a new
card issue. It's a pain in thebutt. But you work hard for your
money, you need to keep track.
(22:46):
And so you can keep as much ofyour money as possible. So the
only way you can increase yourwealth is by keeping track of
your finances, knowing whereevery dollar goes. If you're
usingyou need a budget app, why and a
B,you can set goals, you can set
(23:10):
up where your money is gonna goin the future. So you know you
have enough money at all timesto pay all your needs. As they
come in. You can even set asidemoney for some of your ones. The
less debt you have, the betteroff and life you've gone to be.
(23:32):
No matter what is yoursituation, whether you lose your
job. If you have a large enoughemergency fund, you'll be able
to go three or four monthswithout having to miss a payment
or use your credit cards to payfor your needs. So this is very
(23:53):
important to continue on throughout the rest of your life. If
you do not want to do a budget,or if you've done a budget in
the past and you could neverseem to get it to work for you,
then I recommend happy giraffeyou can find the link in my show
(24:15):
notes. And what that does, youput in your numbers from your
tracking app, because now youknow what, what your numbers
really are and you're not makingout numbers. And it will tell
you how much you have to spendeach and every week without ever
running out of money. So theonly thing you need to do is
(24:38):
once you know that number iskeep your spending under that
amount each week and you shouldnot have any more problems with
debt or overspending. The otherreason people get into debt is
because they don't have a largeenough
(25:00):
Emergency Fund. Emergency Fundis nothing but a savings account
where you put money that's easy,accessible. So if unforeseen
event happens in your life,whether your car breaks down, or
appliance goes out in your home,or somebody has a medical
emergency, you have some moneyavailable to pay for that event
(25:25):
without having to use credit.
How much do you need? Theexperts say anywhere from three
to six months of your expensesthat may seem high, but over
time, you can achieve thosenumbers. Now, once you have
$5,000 or more in that savingsaccount, you need to look for a
(25:48):
high yield savings account or amoney market account. They'll
pay you a lot more interest inwhat your local bank is paying.
Yep, that once you get to thatpoint, you're in pretty good
financial shape, you can movesome of your money over to that
account, earn more interestright now I have a money market
(26:09):
that's paying 5.15% interest.
I'm getting over $100 Each andevery month, which is a lot more
than what my local bank ispaying. Keep focus on your
spending. Keep focus on themoney coming and if you can
(26:31):
increase your income, it'sthings are gonna move a much
faster and your savings accountor grow. Thus your debt will be
paid off much sooner and you'llbe glad you did. So
Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck, I retired accountant
turned truck driver, I reduce mydebt in a relatively short
period of time, debt reductionto achieve financial freedom
takes commitment, confidence,determination.
(00:24):
Benefits of tracking, most donot keep track of spending,
which is when problems can andwill start. Too much debt is
caused by spending too muchmoney. And unaware of that
problem.
I have links in my show notes tothree articles
(00:45):
that you can refer to thatbefore I get started, I'd like
to recommend you go to happygiraffe.com, which I have a link
in my show notes will take youright to where they have a
spreadsheet. If you had problemsin the past doing a budget, this
(01:06):
is a different way to do it. Andthey figure out how much money
you have available to spend. Soif then if you can keep track of
your spending, you know how muchmoney you have available at that
particular point in time. BeforeI get into the benefits of
(01:26):
spending. I found this articlethat did a survey of 100 people
who use spreadsheets, andthey've used a did some tracking
of their personal finances forat least three months. And this
is what that survey came up with93% agree you have a better
(01:49):
insight into your spendinghabits. That is definitely a
benefit. Not the second one was80% agree, you have a better
relationship with your spouse orpartner. If you both are on the
same page, and you are tracking,you know what's going on, and
(02:13):
you both agree to it, yes,you're going to have a better
overall relationship. When youdon't have financial issues,
you're going to have a betterrelationship. 79% agree you
spend less impulsively or youspend less than possibly because
you know you have bills comingdue and you may not have enough
(02:35):
money to cover it. So you'recutting back your spending. It's
a good thing. Number 480 1%Agree, he'll be more confident
about reaching your financialgoals. Yes, you know what's
going on in your finances,that's definitely gonna give you
more confidence and reachinggoals that you may or may not
(02:56):
have set that for now. If you'restruggling to pay down debt, one
of your goals should be to payoff your credit cards, or pay
off Hall your high interestloans, whatever they may be 75%
agree you feel less anxietyabout money. Yeah, you know
what's going on, you know thatyou have bills do you know money
(03:18):
is coming in? Yeah, you won't beas anxious. There's only a
couple ways you can reduce yourdebt. And the first way is
increase your income. But formost of us that's hard to do.
Maybe get a second job, maybe dosomething on the side, whatever.
(03:39):
If you can do that, thatdefinitely gonna help once you
get your spending under control,because you'll have more money
to apply to your emergency fund.
So it'll build faster, andyou'll be able to apply more
money to your debt at a soonerrate. So the benefits of
tracking your spending habits,as the first one is identifying
(04:02):
unnecessary expenses. If you'rerecording all your expenses on a
regular basis, and you'relooking at your bank account,
and you're putting it in aseparate program, and an app on
your computer. This is why youdo that. Because when you go to
(04:22):
your bank account and look tosee what your expenses what that
came out, he had something mightpop up there that was
automatically deducted from yourchecking account that you forgot
about. That's identifyingunnecessary expenses. Tracking
your expenses help you identifyareas where you're spending too
much money. It allows you toidentify Spence's that can be
(04:46):
cut back such as dining out toofrequently, or buying expensive
clothes. For example, if you seeor spending a significant amount
of money on takeout food, youYou can start cooking at home
more often and save money.
The second benefit, promotingbetter financial planning am
(05:10):
budgeting are how you're goingto plan for something, or budget
for something. If you don't knowwhere your money is gone, or how
much or your money is gone toany particular place, it's gonna
be really difficult. By trackingyour spending, you can get a
clearer picture of yourfinancial situation. This helps
(05:31):
you create a budget and planyour finances better. When you
have a clearer idea of how muchmoney are coming in and going
out, you can allocate your fundsbetter pay off that and save for
future expenses, then a thirdreason benefit helping to
achieve financial goals.
Tracking your expenses can helpyou achieve your financial
(05:52):
goals. For instance, if you havea goal to buy a new car, you can
track expenses and cut back onunnecessary expenses to save
money for your purchases. Andthat's the same for reducing
your debt. If you're trackingyour spending, and you realize
that you spent too much on ahobby, you can cut back because
(06:14):
you know your what you're doingwrong, where your money has
gone, where maybe it shouldn'tbe going. So you can then make
changes to your spending, andthen help reach your goals much
better. For enabling bettercontrol of your finance course
more control, the more you knowwhat's going on in your
(06:37):
financial life, the more controlyou have pretty simple, five
detecting and preventing fraud.
And that's important. That's oneof the reasons I do it. If you
track things that come inthrough your checking account,
and through your credit cards,when a charge shows up that you
(07:00):
didn't make or not familiarwith, or your significant other.
And you both are not sure whatthat expense was. Now I've done
this, and forgotten where Imight have spent some money a
day or two later. And maybe theplace where I spend the money
was a different name, and thenlet the name is showing up. And
(07:23):
then I kind of had to thinkabout it for a while. And if the
dollar amount matches what Ithought I spent, then I know I'm
good. But if I can't identifyit, I contact her credit card, I
say there's a charge on myaccount that I'm not sure about.
And they research it, they mightissue me you know, cancel that
(07:44):
card and issue a new card. Andthe methods is, well pen and
paper, I highly suggest you useyour personal computer at home,
either on a spreadsheet ordownload an app. There's a lot
of them out there. Some do morethan others, some cost more than
(08:05):
others, like the one I'm using,which is count about.com, I
don't get any money or refer forrefer unless I get nothing. But
it's less than $10 a year. Andif you don't use all the options
in it, it's like $9.95 a year,it comes out as painless and it
(08:26):
does a great job. And theyalready have your categories set
up for you. So that's a lot ofwork you don't even have to
think about or do. He just gotto look through the category
list and select the ones youwant to use. Now they're in
alphabetical order. And they'renot in any particular order. As
(08:49):
far as natural gas bill,electric bill being under
Utilities that might just benatural gas, electricity, I
might be all by itself, I wouldgroup those under the heading of
utilities would be my masteraccount. And then the
electricity and natural gastrash collected. Water and Sewer
(09:15):
would be sub accounts. If youknow anything about it, you know
what I'm talking about. If youget into it and you don't know
what I'm talking about, once youget into it and start learning
that you'll figure it out. It'sreally easy. Now once you start
entering data, the data is onlyas good as how you enter it. So
(09:38):
you have to be consistent whenyou're entering your data. When
you go to a grocery store storeand buy things. If 80% plus of
it is for groceries, then youcategorize that whole thing
under groceries. If you go tothe grocery store and you buy
(09:59):
gasolinemean, make sure you split that
out on our transportation,gasoline fuel or whatever you
use it, or you'll mess up yourgrocery account as far as the
dollar amounts. And that comesin important later on. Once you
set up your control centercontrol center as a budget, for
(10:20):
those of you that hasn'tlistened to me, I referred to
the budget as a control center,because it helps you control
your finances. Tracking is yourlifeline, it tells you
everything that you're doing ona day to day basis. If you keep
up your entry or data entry, itdoesn't take long, if you do it
(10:46):
once a week, five to 10 minutes,the penny how many transactions
if you have a lot oftransactions, do it twice a
week, and they'll get quicker asyou go. And the longer you use
the program. Whenever you type aname of something in there, and
it's gonna pop up the category,it's going to be right 90% of
(11:09):
the time, he just changed thedate,
put in the dollar amount, andyou're done. So it doesn't
really take a whole lot. Andonce you got your information in
there, you can generate reportsthat you can use all these
things is a benefit fortracking, automatic tracking
(11:35):
through banks and credit cards.
Another way to track yourexpenses is through automated
tracking out my bank doesn't doit. If they do they probably
charge too much. And tips foreffective tracking of spending
habits. Set realistic financialgoals, well be realistic on
paying off your debt. That meanthat's that's realistic, keep
(11:57):
track of all expenses, no matterhow small. If you charge
something that costs 10 cents,you'd have to enter it because
it's in your balance, how you'regoing to reconcile the balance.
If you don't ever, ever entereverything that you're spending
money on no matter the dollaramount. Categorize expenses for
(12:21):
better analysis. Yes, it'salready set up in most of these
apps and track all of them.
Review spending regularly andadjust accordingly. Reviewing
your spending regularly helpsyou identify any changes and
your spending habits. This helpsyou adjust your budget
(12:43):
accordingly. To ensure that youstay on track with your
financial goals. Granite there'ssome spending gonna do is the
same every month, rent,mortgage, car payments,
groceries, fuel for theautomobile, utilities for the
home, that's got to beconsistent, hopefully close to
(13:06):
the same amount. month in andmonth out. The things you have
to watch out is spending foronce things you want, but don't
necessarily need. Like newclothes, you might be able to
get by with the clothes youhave, but you want something
that looks nicer. You wantsomething newer for whatever the
(13:28):
case would be. So that would bea once. That is where you need
to control your spending. Youcan also control your spending
on how you eat you how you useyour spend your money on your
needs, you need food to eat, youcan go to the grocery store and
(13:52):
buy food and cook it at homeyourself. Or you can go to a
restaurant and dine out or youcan go pick up carry out or you
can order it online and have itdelivered. Which of those
options the cheapest the grocerystore is going to be the
cheapest. The most expensive isto have it delivered to your
(14:14):
home already prepared.
Because you got to pay for thefood and you have to pay for the
delivery cost nothing is free inlife.
So you need to cut back on thehome delivery part of it and
maybe dine out last have don'thave anything delivered to your
home. And if you want a pizza,go pick it up yourself. We're
(14:39):
looking for ways to save moneyto reduce your spending. That is
what tracking can help you bylooking at your past history for
the last 30 days of the items inyour food category. For this
example, you can see where yourmoney was going
(15:00):
They can now go forward, makingan adjustment and your
lifestyle, spending becomes ahabit. Saving can become a
habit. But a habit takes time toform and a habit is hard to
break. So you have to focus. Andthat is a benefit of tracking.
(15:24):
And he's I got one more articletells you of how keeping track
expenses helped the budgetingsense it enables you allocate
funds for essential items, suchas rents, build grocery
transportation, those are allwhat needs before spending on
anything else by having aclearer picture of how much
money is coming in, versus howmuch is going out, you're better
(15:46):
equipped at making informeddecisions. Okay, it's third
arco, you can use software orapps, that's what I recommend,
categories your spending, keepyour receipts, instead of going
online and looking something upfor you have to go to your bank
account, and which time out, yougo to your credit card, which
(16:08):
will tie me out if you keep thephysical receipts and just enter
the data from the paperreceipts. So that you can get
used to doing that I did thatfor years. And tracking is
nothing more than keepingarrestor way back when I was in
high school. And college, if youhad a checking account,
(16:31):
everybody kept a check register,if you're smart, the bank gave
you a register when you startit. And then I thought I think
when you bought checks, theywould send a register with it.
And you just keep filling out.
And it was just a runningbalance of, of what was in your
(16:51):
checking account. And when youbought something, you record the
date, where you bought it, thedollar amount and maybe a memo,
when you got a deposit, yourecord the money that was
deposited. That's the only thingyou're doing the same thing. But
you're not doing this pencil andpaper, you're doing it in the
computer. And it's a whole loteasier. That's all this is, but
(17:16):
you're doing a roster for yourchecking account for your
savings account. And for everycredit card. If you have loans
that you pay on the regularbasis, you're doing it for all
those loans, even if the onlything you're looking at is a
payment payment payment month inand month out. So when you look
at it, you can glance through itand see if you missed the
(17:38):
payment, you can glance at tosee if you made a payment maybe
one day late, whatever the case,you have your own written
history of what's going on andyour finances. There is an app
that I kind of watched a YouTubeevery once in a while. It's a
pretty good one. It's whyyou need a budget. Why and a B?
(17:59):
It's a very good application, itdoes tracking, it does a
budgeting and it does more thanthat. If you're interested,
check it out. Why an A B, I getno referrals whatsoever from
them. They don't even know Iexist. Probably check it out. I
(18:20):
think it's somewhat expensive,about $15 a year. But I had a
listener contact me and saidthey were happy I mentioned it
in my podcast, because they'vebeen using it and they love it.
So if you can't afford it, doit. If you have nothing to
(18:40):
spare, then you have to do thisstuff manually. If the only
thing you can do is listen to apodcast, you don't have a
computer, you don't have aspreadsheet, then you have to do
it pencil and paper and getstarted right away. If you're
doing it that way, that's gonnatake a lot more time. But it's
(19:04):
definitely worth the effort. Nomatter how you do it. I'll be
back in one moment with my finalthoughts.
If you're interested andlearning about an online
software that helped myself getout of debt,
it does tracking, budgeting, andkeeps track of all your assets
(19:27):
and all your debt and even tellsyou how much and when to
transfer money into your savingsaccount and how much and when to
transfer money to your debt andwhich debts to pay off in order.
First. It's not cheap. It's aone time payment. But it will
(19:48):
definitely be an investmentsomething and yourself and an
investment in your personalfinancial life. If you're
interested sendMay an e mail at reduced debt
increase well@gmail.com. AndI'll send you the information
about this online software thatworked great for me. For those
(20:11):
of you as a debt problem, forthose of you who had goals set,
and you reach your goals in yourthinking, I no longer have to do
tracking, I no longer have tokeep my control center up to
date, well, you will be wrong,you must continue to do this,
(20:31):
even when you achieve all yourgoals, whether you're paying off
debt, trying to achieve sometype of saving goals, you must
continue doing this the rest ofyour life, keeping track of your
finances is number one, doing acontrol center will be number
two, even when you achieveeverything you think you need to
(20:56):
achieve, you must continue doingthis, or your spending will get
out of control again. So to keepyourself under control at all
times for the rest of your life.
As long as you're doing your ownfinances, you must keep on
(21:19):
tracking all your income, andall of your expenses, and then
putting that into your controlcenter each and every month
going forward so that you cansee where your finances are
changing from time to time, ifyou don't continue to do this,
(21:39):
you'll fall back into oldhabits, which is generally
spending more money than youmake. And that is the number one
problem everybody in America oreven worldwide has. So by
tracking everything you do,through all your credit cards
through your checking account,your savings account, wherever
(22:03):
you are putting your money inand out of the need to be
tracking all those accounts.
Why? Because of the benefits itgives you. It keeps your
spending under control, andidentifies problems, and
identifies if there's any fraudproblems on any of your
accounts. If somebody hackedinto your credit card account,
(22:24):
and start spending money thatyou don't know about, if you're
tracking on a regular basis,you'll see it right away, he
could put a stop to it, you cancancel that card and get a new
card issue. It's a pain in thebutt. But you work hard for your
money, you need to keep track.
(22:46):
And so you can keep as much ofyour money as possible. So the
only way you can increase yourwealth is by keeping track of
your finances, knowing whereevery dollar goes. If you're
usingyou need a budget app, why and a
B,you can set goals, you can set
(23:10):
up where your money is gonna goin the future. So you know you
have enough money at all timesto pay all your needs. As they
come in. You can even set asidemoney for some of your ones. The
less debt you have, the betteroff and life you've gone to be.
(23:32):
No matter what is yoursituation, whether you lose your
job. If you have a large enoughemergency fund, you'll be able
to go three or four monthswithout having to miss a payment
or use your credit cards to payfor your needs. So this is very
(23:53):
important to continue on throughout the rest of your life. If
you do not want to do a budget,or if you've done a budget in
the past and you could neverseem to get it to work for you,
then I recommend happy giraffeyou can find the link in my show
(24:15):
notes. And what that does, youput in your numbers from your
tracking app, because now youknow what, what your numbers
really are and you're not makingout numbers. And it will tell
you how much you have to spendeach and every week without ever
running out of money. So theonly thing you need to do is
(24:38):
once you know that number iskeep your spending under that
amount each week and you shouldnot have any more problems with
debt or overspending. The otherreason people get into debt is
because they don't have a largeenough
(25:00):
Emergency Fund. Emergency Fundis nothing but a savings account
where you put money that's easy,accessible. So if unforeseen
event happens in your life,whether your car breaks down, or
appliance goes out in your home,or somebody has a medical
emergency, you have some moneyavailable to pay for that event
(25:25):
without having to use credit.
How much do you need? Theexperts say anywhere from three
to six months of your expensesthat may seem high, but over
time, you can achieve thosenumbers. Now, once you have
$5,000 or more in that savingsaccount, you need to look for a
(25:48):
high yield savings account or amoney market account. They'll
pay you a lot more interest inwhat your local bank is paying.
Yep, that once you get to thatpoint, you're in pretty good
financial shape, you can movesome of your money over to that
account, earn more interestright now I have a money market
(26:09):
that's paying 5.15% interest.
I'm getting over $100 Each andevery month, which is a lot more
than what my local bank ispaying. Keep focus on your
spending. Keep focus on themoney coming and if you can
(26:31):
increase your income, it'sthings are gonna move a much
faster and your savings accountor grow. Thus your debt will be
paid off much sooner and you'llbe glad you did. So
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