November 26, 2023 • 29 mins
Tracking for six months or longer and sometime may make mistakes in posting. What to look out for in the app. Setting up recurring posts and fixing older posts.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Charles McDonald (00:04):
Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck, I retired
accountant turned truck driver,I reduce my debt in a relatively
short period of time, debtreduction, to achieve financial
freedom takes commitment,confidence, determination,
(00:24):
tracking revisited, tracking forsix months or longer and
sometimes may make mistakes andposting what to look out for in
the app setting up a reoccurringpost and fixing older posts. So
you've been tracking for awhile, or maybe he just started
(00:45):
and you got 45 days. And becauseyou're just getting started, you
want back the previous month,put all that in, got yourself up
to date, and he might havesomewhere around 45 days, or
maybe you've been doing it for awhile not paying attention.
Maybe you haven't set up anyreoccurring entries that have do
(01:07):
it for you, or will help you doit quicker. So what do you need
to look for? Well, the importantthing you must realize is
consistency. Whenever you'reposting to your app, for your
tracking purposes, you must beconsistent and get your same
(01:31):
expenses into the samecategories every time. So when
you pay your utility bills, makesure they go into the correct
utilities, you got natural gas,electric, phone, water, sewer,
whatever you utilities gottamake sure that when you pay that
(01:52):
bill is getting posted into thecorrect category. The other
thing you must watch out for isdo not post directly to the
master account. And yourcategories. What is the master
account, the master account isbasically the heading account.
(02:17):
So if you set up housing, forinstance, and what I've done is
put housing like a dash one, sothat it's an alphabetical order,
when I print out my categorieslist, so it matches my control
center. So it comes out closeevery month to the same. So it's
(02:38):
this a printed out and pluggedthe numbers, it's in a close
enough order, I don't have topay real close attention. I do
that pay attention. But it'squick and easy. I'm not jumping
out all over the place when I'mdoing my control center. So you
do not post directly to yourmaster account or the heading
(02:59):
account. But sometimes you mightdo it by mistake, I do it. You
want to post directly into thecategory. Now when I set up
housing I have housing is mymaster, then I have home
furnishing home insurance, no.
And that's put in any order youwant. Home Insurance, real
(03:19):
estate taxes, and then I haveutilities as a sub account under
the master. But then I have eachindividual utility company set
up as a sub account under theutilities. So I don't post
directly to housing, and I don'tpost directly to utilities. So
(03:43):
that's easy to remember. Butsometimes mistakes can happen.
So how do you find a mistake?
Well, I just done it I wanted tothe app I use, there's a couple
always things to look forinstead of just scrolling down
(04:03):
through all your transaction lawunder the category and looking
for a heading account posted tothat individual item. That's one
way. Another way is to do areport by transaction and this
scroll down and look at the nameof the category. If it pops up
(04:25):
now it's easy for me because Igot a one b two B, you know, I
got those A's and B numbers inthere to put it in order. So I
just scroll down through thereport. If I see an a one or a b
two or a C three or whatever, Iknow it got posted to the wrong
(04:47):
account. It got posted to themain heading category or the
master account. I just writedown the date, the dollar amount
and I looked to see whichaccount it was As whether in my
checking, was it in a creditcard was it in a savings, and
then I identified it, I can thengo to that particular individual
(05:11):
transaction, wherever it may be,and then do an edit and fix the
category. And the reason youwant to do it and may not throw
off the totals of thatparticular category, but it
could throw off the detailwithin that category. So for
(05:32):
instance, if you would post yourmortgage payment to the housing
heading category, instead ofmortgage payment, yes, the total
amount for the everything addedtogether would be correct. But
if you would look at the detail,your mortgage payment won't show
(05:53):
up. But the total, you know whatI'm saying you would have a zero
under that mortgage payment. Soit's a got posted the generally
the correct area, but it didn'tget posted to the correct
individual category that you'vebeen using for this particular
instance. So it's important todo that. Sometimes if you're
(06:18):
doing your control center, andmight be a glaring mistake, that
jumps out at you, and you can gofix it right away. Sometimes
they're kind of subtle, and youdon't notice them for like bank
fees $1 $76.26. That's what Ijust found, it was posted to the
heading account. And it wasmonths old. I never noticed it.
(06:42):
But I did report I saw it, Ifixed it. So it's a never ending
process. Consistency is key. Andin order to be accurate on your
control center and have bettercontrol. You need to be
consistent and accurate on yourposting of your transactions and
(07:06):
your tracking software. Anotherproblem or way you might be able
to find it it well, I'd setmentioned reports you can do
budget reports where you'recomparing one month to the next,
if something is blaring way off,maybe or gasoline for the month
(07:29):
for the current month is weighedlow. And you know, well, I just
filled up, you know, last twoweeks, and it was $100 each, but
yet it's only shown zero. Well,that means you might oppose that
transaction to the wrongcategory all together. Maybe
your categories are off, maybeyour bank checking reconciles
(07:51):
out to the penny, he just got itinto the wrong category. So
maybe your gasoline is way low.
But another category is wayhigh. Maybe it's something you
don't notice. So you know, well,I know I want to this gas
station. So look through yourtransactions and find and see
where it got posted to and fixthat. Fix it another way. It's
(08:12):
something like that should kindof jump out at you after a
period of time. Once youfamiliar with everything going
on in your finances, you have ageneral idea what has happened
in the last couple of weeks, youknow that every time you go and
fill up your cars, it's $75 or$95, or whatever the case would
(08:38):
be. So you have a general ideaof what numbers to look for. But
they're not there. That meansthat one you did post it maybe
or you hadn't entered it yet.
That's another consideration. Soif you've entered it, then maybe
it got into the wrong category.
And if it stays in the wrongcategory, it gets throw off your
(09:01):
control center, it can throw offyour reports down the line
because you're not beingconsistent. One way to help you
avoid these type of mistakes isto set up a re occurring entry.
reoccurring entries are thosethat you pay every month no
(09:26):
matter what the simple oneswould be all your loan payments
that stay the same every month,your mortgage, your car
payments, your credit cards canchange but you could set up the
minimum bounce whatever it istoday. And then maybe go back in
a few months and make it zero ifyou paid it off or reduce it
(09:50):
down as the bounce comes down.
So it's occasionally you mighthave to update Add a bit, it's
not anything that would be verytime consuming. If you don't
update it and every time youpost it you got, you're gonna
have to change some of thesereoccurring entries, the dollar
(10:14):
amount and the date anyway, sobut it's like quicker than enter
and everything, the you won'thave to put in description you
just changed the day to categoryshould be there. If you set the
category up correctly, the firsttime you have it under control,
change the dollar amount, andeverything is taken care of. Now
(10:38):
on the software that I'm using,I'm not going to mention a name,
they don't pay me to tell themabout it. But they all kind of
work the same. You can set upthe reoccurring entry, you have
to go to recurring transactions.
And you can add one if you justenter in it. So the very first
(10:59):
time, say if you're just gettingstarted using this app is brand
new, or you just starting totrack, then every time you come
up to an entry that you knowyou're going to pay at least
once a month or more should bean interim setting it up in your
reoccurring transactions. Andthen once you have them all set
(11:23):
up, you just need to post themthe next month, you just need to
click Yep, the date changed thedate, maybe the dollar amount
and enter and it's gone. Youshould set it up to where you
have to review it before postand you need it to come up at
least four to seven days inadvance. So you can look
(11:51):
forward, it's important to knowwhat's going on. So if you have
set up seven days that come upto be approved seven days in
advance, you have a general ideawhen your bills are coming due,
you can look there. And you knowin the next seven days, I got
these to pay, you have X amountin your checking account, you
(12:13):
can cover a new set to go. Sothose are some things you can
use in your trapping, trackingapplication to help make your
personal finances easier andwork for you. That's the idea.
So if you're looking forward onwhat's coming due, you're not
(12:33):
going to go out and spend toomuch on a Friday or Saturday or
weekend and then come up shortand not be able to pay some of
your bills coming up. Becauseyou know, get paid for another
week after you know, two weeksfrom this particular weekend. He
can always plan ahead, lookforward is very important. So
(12:57):
being consistent on where you'reposting to your categories.
Looking forward is trackingapplication can help you do all
those things. And it doesn'ttake a whole lot of effort.
You'd been doing it for sixmonths, maybe made some
(13:17):
mistakes, you need to go backand find them and fix them.
Maybe you've been doing forthree months, same thing, maybe
you're just getting tired todoing it's too repetitious, set
up reoccurring transactions,make the program work for you.
And you will be more accurateand better off in the long run.
(13:38):
One of the ways you can look formistakes is by doing reports and
looking to see if the the totalsubcategories are more or less.
Basically, you're looking forless than the total in that
account. I personally didn'tfind anything in mind. So that
(14:01):
means I had a pretty good thing.
I did find a couple that wasposted to the heading account or
the master category. And I wasable but they were small dollar
amounts. So nothing that wouldbe noticeable, but I fixed them.
Because we want to beconsistent. We want to have good
(14:24):
reports. The reason you're doingall this is because maybe you
have a debt problem. And how Ido you have a debt problem
because you're not planning forthe future. You're living
paycheck to paycheck. Why areyou living paycheck to paycheck
because maybe your debt is toomuch. Maybe you don't have
(14:46):
control on your spending, maybejust are not looking forward far
enough ahead to see what'scoming up so that you can
control your spending today. Sohe Have money available to pay
your monthly bills tomorrow.
That's all this is all about.
(15:07):
It's a matter of you, gainingcontrol of your personal
finances and keeping control ofyour finances. Now that I've
talked about where to look forproblems and things, when you
first get started, you need toset up your categories for those
(15:30):
ones you use. Now, whenever youuse an app, it's going to come
with categories already set up,it makes life easy for you less
thinking. But in order to makeyour budgeting or control center
process easier, you need torearrange your categories to
(15:52):
look more like your budget, oryour control center. A budget is
a control center, I like to callit a control center, because it
helps you control your finances,the categories are gonna be in
alphabetical order, by theapplication, however they set it
(16:13):
up. So it's gonna have like analphabetical order advertising
it from A to Z. So the yourgroupings for your control
center is gonna be all over theplace, you can go in and do like
I did, I used a, I'd like tohave my control center set up
(16:38):
with my needs first needs arehousing, transportation, and
food, savings, and debt. That'snot anywhere else. So pretty
much five. So I want to put a,b, c, d, e, and in that
particular order a is housing Bis transportation, C is food, D
(17:00):
is savings, and E is debt, youcan do a numbers, like a one, a
two, a dash housing would be theheading or the name of your
master count for your housingcategory. Why am I doing that,
(17:20):
I'm doing that. So now I can gothrough the alphabetical list of
my categories, and fine realestate taxes, make that a two.
So that now it's going to comeup number two, a one is gonna be
housing, a two is gonna be realestate taxes, a three might be
(17:45):
my mortgage payment, then a fourwould be my master sub master of
my utilities, and then I'll putall the utilities under that
one. So then it would be a fourwould come up four, so it'd be
housing. When you print it out,it's going to be in this order,
(18:06):
a one, a two, a three, a four.
And so some would say housing.
Whatever I just said, utilities,or housing, mortgage, real
estate tax, home insuranceutilities, it's going to come up
in that same order. Every time Iprint out a report by category
(18:27):
every month, every time period Iprint out has gone out print out
the same way every time. Theonly way it won't, is when I
post something to somethingthat's not in the correct order,
but I want it there. So I'll goin and change it. And I'll do it
by adding my categories list.
That's how you make your life somuch easier. And makes the
(18:49):
updating of your control centeron a regular base, clockwork, no
problems all because you've goneto set up your control center,
the exact same order that thisreport comes out. Occasionally,
you'll have something in therethat is once a year or
something, and it might be alittle bit out of place. But
(19:11):
then you only have one or twoitems you're looking forward to
plug in to your Control Center,and not every number where you
might then miss something. Sothat's important. And it will
make your life a lot easier downthe road. It's kind of a pain
setting up it. It's not toohard. I've done it. I did it is
(19:33):
that whatever. If you can thinkof a different system that works
for you to put it in order inwhich you want. Fine, go ahead
and do that. That's while Ifigured out how to get it to
work for me. I'll be back in onemoment with my final thoughts.
(19:56):
If you're interested in learningabout an online software If that
helped myself get out of debt,it does tracking, budgeting, and
keeps track of all your assetsand all your debt. It even tells
you how much and when totransfer money into your savings
account, and how much and whento transfer money to your debt,
(20:20):
and which debts to pay off inorder. First, it's not cheap.
It's a one time payment. But itwill definitely be an
investment, something andyourself and an investment in
your personal financial life. Ifyou're interested, send me an
(20:40):
email at reduced debt increasewealth@gmail.com. And I'll send
you the information about thisonline software that worked
great for me. One of the finalitems to talk about on your
tracking program, is if you'reentering your transactions
(21:04):
directly from an online bankaccount, or your online credit
card detail, where you'repicking up the date. Oh, if
you're out your checking accountthat that date is the date that
that item cleared the bank,which is different than the date
(21:26):
you actually purchase that item.
Why does that matter? Well, itmatters towards the end of every
month. Because if you use thebank date, and it's in the next
month, but it was purchased inthe previous month, it could
throw off your budget for thelast month and future month. So
(21:50):
in order to be consistent, whichdate are you gonna use? Well,
for taxes that then mainly it'sat the end of the year, is it
for taxes is to date, youactually spend the money or
purchased the item, which couldbe different than when it
(22:10):
cleared the bank. So on December30, you go out and you make a
big charitable contributioncash, let's say or cheque. But
it doesn't cleared the bankuntil January 10. Well, you want
to claim that in the previousyear, because that's when you
made it, you keep your receipt.
(22:33):
And that's your proof of whenyou actually did it. So for
income taxes, it's when youspend the money, not when the
money clears the bank, if youwant to be consistent throughout
the years, so you don't forget,you should do that every month.
So if you're using yourreceipts, use the date on the
(22:54):
receipt, because that's the daythat you actually had that
expenditure, not when it clearedthe bank. The same thing with
your credit cards is the dateyou do it not the date it
clears. Now most likely, it'sgoing to clear the same day in
most cases, but it may not. Ifyou go to restaurants, it may on
(23:17):
a weekend, it may not clear tillMonday, if you are doing it on a
Tuesday, it might clear onWednesday, which is no big deal.
But let's be consistent on thedates we're using. I bring that
up because I think most people,that's probably they're entering
their transaction directly fromtheir checking account online,
(23:40):
or their credit card accountsonline. So that's the only
reason why you should keep apeople paper receipt doesn't
make a difference. Not really awhole lot. But it could and may
make a difference on your incometaxes at the end of the year. So
definitely remember that at theend of the year, keep your
(24:01):
receipts for income taxes, whichyou should anyway, so you can
prove what happens. Now whenyou're entering transactions and
every account like you couldhave two or three credit card
accounts in your checkingaccount in your savings account.
Your your bank may do it one waywhere it could say pending
(24:21):
transaction. And it's alreadydeducted from your balance.
That's what my bank does. But ona credit card account or a
different company, which in mycase is a credit card. It'll say
pending transaction and it willshow it there. But it's not a
part of the balance yet. So howare you going to handle that?
(24:44):
What I do since I know ithappened, I go ahead and enter
it in my application my app, butI might use instead of the
current date I might usetomorrow's date so that it's
above every thing out so thatwhen I get everything entered, I
can look on my Trent my roasterfor today, their current day and
(25:10):
see what my balance is to makesure it matches the balance on
the line account or my my creditcard account. For those, I'm
good. And then the other twoitems are tomorrow, they might
clear tomorrow, I may changethem back to today, because
that's when I actually spent themoney. But I don't really have
(25:33):
to unless one at the end of theyear, or close to end of the
month. That's the only two timesthat really matters in the
middle of month, it's not gonnamatter much, because it's not
going to affect anything. Theimportant part here is be
consistent. And you need to makesure that when you do your
entries, you're matched to thepenny to your application that
(25:58):
you're entering in, and what theapplication you're getting the
information from, make sure bothare the same, the balances
should match. If not, you needto find the problem, go back and
find it and fix it. For me, themost common thing is I might
(26:18):
enter a transaction one day, andthen a week later think I didn't
do it, enter it again. And thenmy balance is off. I take the
difference I find $1 amount I godown through Oh, that's in there
twice. And I was there two daysapart, or week apart or a few
days apart. The same place, samedollar amount, just different
(26:42):
dates. I delete one I'm inbounce I'm everybody's happy and
we're good to go. That's my mostcommon mistake, or I make a
thing. Or I might just be off apenny, I might enter the wrong
amount because I'm not payingclose enough attention. So I
look for pennies, I look fordimes, and even, I think good
(27:03):
lately and hadn't had a wholelot of problems. But
occasionally, I have some badtimes where I make a lot of
mistakes. So let's recap. You'redoing the application and you're
doing your tracking so that youcan take control of your money,
and most importantly, yourspending. And you can do your
(27:25):
control center or a budget tosee where your money is going.
That's the reason you're doingall this. If you've been doing
it for a while you should lookfor errors, make sure he didn't
post directly to a headingaccount, or a master account. It
should always be posted to a subaccount, you can do a report and
(27:49):
scroll down through the reportto see where you might have gone
wrong. Or he can just lookthrough your check register. But
I just do all transactions ontheir own. On the rest are just
do all everything. So includesall my my checking my savings
and my credit cards. And I justscroll through it. And I'm just
(28:10):
looking for anything that don'tlook right. I see it, I fix it.
And I keep going as you do yourweekly entry, make sure you're
always in balance with your bankand or the credit card statement
that you're working from. Makesure your dollar amounts match.
Be aware that sometimesdepending on the company that it
(28:33):
might show, and it might show aspending, but it's not a part of
the balance yet. Or it hasn'tbeen deducted from your checking
account yet. Every bank is goingto do it a little different. My
bank shows it pending but it'salready deducted from my
account. My but my credit cardshows pending and it's not
included in that account. Sothey're all they all could be
(28:56):
different. So watch out forthat. Yes. On a regular basis,
review your work and make sureeverything is as accurate as
possible because then that makesyour control center more
accurate and more detailoriginated and you'll get good
information from this little bitextra effort you put into it.
(29:20):
You'll get a lot betterconsistent information, and
you'll be glad you did so
Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck, I retired
accountant turned truck driver,I reduce my debt in a relatively
short period of time, debtreduction, to achieve financial
freedom takes commitment,confidence, determination,
(00:24):
tracking revisited, tracking forsix months or longer and
sometimes may make mistakes andposting what to look out for in
the app setting up a reoccurringpost and fixing older posts. So
you've been tracking for awhile, or maybe he just started
(00:45):
and you got 45 days. And becauseyou're just getting started, you
want back the previous month,put all that in, got yourself up
to date, and he might havesomewhere around 45 days, or
maybe you've been doing it for awhile not paying attention.
Maybe you haven't set up anyreoccurring entries that have do
(01:07):
it for you, or will help you doit quicker. So what do you need
to look for? Well, the importantthing you must realize is
consistency. Whenever you'reposting to your app, for your
tracking purposes, you must beconsistent and get your same
(01:31):
expenses into the samecategories every time. So when
you pay your utility bills, makesure they go into the correct
utilities, you got natural gas,electric, phone, water, sewer,
whatever you utilities gottamake sure that when you pay that
(01:52):
bill is getting posted into thecorrect category. The other
thing you must watch out for isdo not post directly to the
master account. And yourcategories. What is the master
account, the master account isbasically the heading account.
(02:17):
So if you set up housing, forinstance, and what I've done is
put housing like a dash one, sothat it's an alphabetical order,
when I print out my categorieslist, so it matches my control
center. So it comes out closeevery month to the same. So it's
(02:38):
this a printed out and pluggedthe numbers, it's in a close
enough order, I don't have topay real close attention. I do
that pay attention. But it'squick and easy. I'm not jumping
out all over the place when I'mdoing my control center. So you
do not post directly to yourmaster account or the heading
(02:59):
account. But sometimes you mightdo it by mistake, I do it. You
want to post directly into thecategory. Now when I set up
housing I have housing is mymaster, then I have home
furnishing home insurance, no.
And that's put in any order youwant. Home Insurance, real
(03:19):
estate taxes, and then I haveutilities as a sub account under
the master. But then I have eachindividual utility company set
up as a sub account under theutilities. So I don't post
directly to housing, and I don'tpost directly to utilities. So
(03:43):
that's easy to remember. Butsometimes mistakes can happen.
So how do you find a mistake?
Well, I just done it I wanted tothe app I use, there's a couple
always things to look forinstead of just scrolling down
(04:03):
through all your transaction lawunder the category and looking
for a heading account posted tothat individual item. That's one
way. Another way is to do areport by transaction and this
scroll down and look at the nameof the category. If it pops up
(04:25):
now it's easy for me because Igot a one b two B, you know, I
got those A's and B numbers inthere to put it in order. So I
just scroll down through thereport. If I see an a one or a b
two or a C three or whatever, Iknow it got posted to the wrong
(04:47):
account. It got posted to themain heading category or the
master account. I just writedown the date, the dollar amount
and I looked to see whichaccount it was As whether in my
checking, was it in a creditcard was it in a savings, and
then I identified it, I can thengo to that particular individual
(05:11):
transaction, wherever it may be,and then do an edit and fix the
category. And the reason youwant to do it and may not throw
off the totals of thatparticular category, but it
could throw off the detailwithin that category. So for
(05:32):
instance, if you would post yourmortgage payment to the housing
heading category, instead ofmortgage payment, yes, the total
amount for the everything addedtogether would be correct. But
if you would look at the detail,your mortgage payment won't show
(05:53):
up. But the total, you know whatI'm saying you would have a zero
under that mortgage payment. Soit's a got posted the generally
the correct area, but it didn'tget posted to the correct
individual category that you'vebeen using for this particular
instance. So it's important todo that. Sometimes if you're
(06:18):
doing your control center, andmight be a glaring mistake, that
jumps out at you, and you can gofix it right away. Sometimes
they're kind of subtle, and youdon't notice them for like bank
fees $1 $76.26. That's what Ijust found, it was posted to the
heading account. And it wasmonths old. I never noticed it.
(06:42):
But I did report I saw it, Ifixed it. So it's a never ending
process. Consistency is key. Andin order to be accurate on your
control center and have bettercontrol. You need to be
consistent and accurate on yourposting of your transactions and
(07:06):
your tracking software. Anotherproblem or way you might be able
to find it it well, I'd setmentioned reports you can do
budget reports where you'recomparing one month to the next,
if something is blaring way off,maybe or gasoline for the month
(07:29):
for the current month is weighedlow. And you know, well, I just
filled up, you know, last twoweeks, and it was $100 each, but
yet it's only shown zero. Well,that means you might oppose that
transaction to the wrongcategory all together. Maybe
your categories are off, maybeyour bank checking reconciles
(07:51):
out to the penny, he just got itinto the wrong category. So
maybe your gasoline is way low.
But another category is wayhigh. Maybe it's something you
don't notice. So you know, well,I know I want to this gas
station. So look through yourtransactions and find and see
where it got posted to and fixthat. Fix it another way. It's
(08:12):
something like that should kindof jump out at you after a
period of time. Once youfamiliar with everything going
on in your finances, you have ageneral idea what has happened
in the last couple of weeks, youknow that every time you go and
fill up your cars, it's $75 or$95, or whatever the case would
(08:38):
be. So you have a general ideaof what numbers to look for. But
they're not there. That meansthat one you did post it maybe
or you hadn't entered it yet.
That's another consideration. Soif you've entered it, then maybe
it got into the wrong category.
And if it stays in the wrongcategory, it gets throw off your
(09:01):
control center, it can throw offyour reports down the line
because you're not beingconsistent. One way to help you
avoid these type of mistakes isto set up a re occurring entry.
reoccurring entries are thosethat you pay every month no
(09:26):
matter what the simple oneswould be all your loan payments
that stay the same every month,your mortgage, your car
payments, your credit cards canchange but you could set up the
minimum bounce whatever it istoday. And then maybe go back in
a few months and make it zero ifyou paid it off or reduce it
(09:50):
down as the bounce comes down.
So it's occasionally you mighthave to update Add a bit, it's
not anything that would be verytime consuming. If you don't
update it and every time youpost it you got, you're gonna
have to change some of thesereoccurring entries, the dollar
(10:14):
amount and the date anyway, sobut it's like quicker than enter
and everything, the you won'thave to put in description you
just changed the day to categoryshould be there. If you set the
category up correctly, the firsttime you have it under control,
change the dollar amount, andeverything is taken care of. Now
(10:38):
on the software that I'm using,I'm not going to mention a name,
they don't pay me to tell themabout it. But they all kind of
work the same. You can set upthe reoccurring entry, you have
to go to recurring transactions.
And you can add one if you justenter in it. So the very first
(10:59):
time, say if you're just gettingstarted using this app is brand
new, or you just starting totrack, then every time you come
up to an entry that you knowyou're going to pay at least
once a month or more should bean interim setting it up in your
reoccurring transactions. Andthen once you have them all set
(11:23):
up, you just need to post themthe next month, you just need to
click Yep, the date changed thedate, maybe the dollar amount
and enter and it's gone. Youshould set it up to where you
have to review it before postand you need it to come up at
least four to seven days inadvance. So you can look
(11:51):
forward, it's important to knowwhat's going on. So if you have
set up seven days that come upto be approved seven days in
advance, you have a general ideawhen your bills are coming due,
you can look there. And you knowin the next seven days, I got
these to pay, you have X amountin your checking account, you
(12:13):
can cover a new set to go. Sothose are some things you can
use in your trapping, trackingapplication to help make your
personal finances easier andwork for you. That's the idea.
So if you're looking forward onwhat's coming due, you're not
(12:33):
going to go out and spend toomuch on a Friday or Saturday or
weekend and then come up shortand not be able to pay some of
your bills coming up. Becauseyou know, get paid for another
week after you know, two weeksfrom this particular weekend. He
can always plan ahead, lookforward is very important. So
(12:57):
being consistent on where you'reposting to your categories.
Looking forward is trackingapplication can help you do all
those things. And it doesn'ttake a whole lot of effort.
You'd been doing it for sixmonths, maybe made some
(13:17):
mistakes, you need to go backand find them and fix them.
Maybe you've been doing forthree months, same thing, maybe
you're just getting tired todoing it's too repetitious, set
up reoccurring transactions,make the program work for you.
And you will be more accurateand better off in the long run.
(13:38):
One of the ways you can look formistakes is by doing reports and
looking to see if the the totalsubcategories are more or less.
Basically, you're looking forless than the total in that
account. I personally didn'tfind anything in mind. So that
(14:01):
means I had a pretty good thing.
I did find a couple that wasposted to the heading account or
the master category. And I wasable but they were small dollar
amounts. So nothing that wouldbe noticeable, but I fixed them.
Because we want to beconsistent. We want to have good
(14:24):
reports. The reason you're doingall this is because maybe you
have a debt problem. And how Ido you have a debt problem
because you're not planning forthe future. You're living
paycheck to paycheck. Why areyou living paycheck to paycheck
because maybe your debt is toomuch. Maybe you don't have
(14:46):
control on your spending, maybejust are not looking forward far
enough ahead to see what'scoming up so that you can
control your spending today. Sohe Have money available to pay
your monthly bills tomorrow.
That's all this is all about.
(15:07):
It's a matter of you, gainingcontrol of your personal
finances and keeping control ofyour finances. Now that I've
talked about where to look forproblems and things, when you
first get started, you need toset up your categories for those
(15:30):
ones you use. Now, whenever youuse an app, it's going to come
with categories already set up,it makes life easy for you less
thinking. But in order to makeyour budgeting or control center
process easier, you need torearrange your categories to
(15:52):
look more like your budget, oryour control center. A budget is
a control center, I like to callit a control center, because it
helps you control your finances,the categories are gonna be in
alphabetical order, by theapplication, however they set it
(16:13):
up. So it's gonna have like analphabetical order advertising
it from A to Z. So the yourgroupings for your control
center is gonna be all over theplace, you can go in and do like
I did, I used a, I'd like tohave my control center set up
(16:38):
with my needs first needs arehousing, transportation, and
food, savings, and debt. That'snot anywhere else. So pretty
much five. So I want to put a,b, c, d, e, and in that
particular order a is housing Bis transportation, C is food, D
(17:00):
is savings, and E is debt, youcan do a numbers, like a one, a
two, a dash housing would be theheading or the name of your
master count for your housingcategory. Why am I doing that,
(17:20):
I'm doing that. So now I can gothrough the alphabetical list of
my categories, and fine realestate taxes, make that a two.
So that now it's going to comeup number two, a one is gonna be
housing, a two is gonna be realestate taxes, a three might be
(17:45):
my mortgage payment, then a fourwould be my master sub master of
my utilities, and then I'll putall the utilities under that
one. So then it would be a fourwould come up four, so it'd be
housing. When you print it out,it's going to be in this order,
(18:06):
a one, a two, a three, a four.
And so some would say housing.
Whatever I just said, utilities,or housing, mortgage, real
estate tax, home insuranceutilities, it's going to come up
in that same order. Every time Iprint out a report by category
(18:27):
every month, every time period Iprint out has gone out print out
the same way every time. Theonly way it won't, is when I
post something to somethingthat's not in the correct order,
but I want it there. So I'll goin and change it. And I'll do it
by adding my categories list.
That's how you make your life somuch easier. And makes the
(18:49):
updating of your control centeron a regular base, clockwork, no
problems all because you've goneto set up your control center,
the exact same order that thisreport comes out. Occasionally,
you'll have something in therethat is once a year or
something, and it might be alittle bit out of place. But
(19:11):
then you only have one or twoitems you're looking forward to
plug in to your Control Center,and not every number where you
might then miss something. Sothat's important. And it will
make your life a lot easier downthe road. It's kind of a pain
setting up it. It's not toohard. I've done it. I did it is
(19:33):
that whatever. If you can thinkof a different system that works
for you to put it in order inwhich you want. Fine, go ahead
and do that. That's while Ifigured out how to get it to
work for me. I'll be back in onemoment with my final thoughts.
(19:56):
If you're interested in learningabout an online software If that
helped myself get out of debt,it does tracking, budgeting, and
keeps track of all your assetsand all your debt. It even tells
you how much and when totransfer money into your savings
account, and how much and whento transfer money to your debt,
(20:20):
and which debts to pay off inorder. First, it's not cheap.
It's a one time payment. But itwill definitely be an
investment, something andyourself and an investment in
your personal financial life. Ifyou're interested, send me an
(20:40):
email at reduced debt increasewealth@gmail.com. And I'll send
you the information about thisonline software that worked
great for me. One of the finalitems to talk about on your
tracking program, is if you'reentering your transactions
(21:04):
directly from an online bankaccount, or your online credit
card detail, where you'repicking up the date. Oh, if
you're out your checking accountthat that date is the date that
that item cleared the bank,which is different than the date
(21:26):
you actually purchase that item.
Why does that matter? Well, itmatters towards the end of every
month. Because if you use thebank date, and it's in the next
month, but it was purchased inthe previous month, it could
throw off your budget for thelast month and future month. So
(21:50):
in order to be consistent, whichdate are you gonna use? Well,
for taxes that then mainly it'sat the end of the year, is it
for taxes is to date, youactually spend the money or
purchased the item, which couldbe different than when it
(22:10):
cleared the bank. So on December30, you go out and you make a
big charitable contributioncash, let's say or cheque. But
it doesn't cleared the bankuntil January 10. Well, you want
to claim that in the previousyear, because that's when you
made it, you keep your receipt.
(22:33):
And that's your proof of whenyou actually did it. So for
income taxes, it's when youspend the money, not when the
money clears the bank, if youwant to be consistent throughout
the years, so you don't forget,you should do that every month.
So if you're using yourreceipts, use the date on the
(22:54):
receipt, because that's the daythat you actually had that
expenditure, not when it clearedthe bank. The same thing with
your credit cards is the dateyou do it not the date it
clears. Now most likely, it'sgoing to clear the same day in
most cases, but it may not. Ifyou go to restaurants, it may on
(23:17):
a weekend, it may not clear tillMonday, if you are doing it on a
Tuesday, it might clear onWednesday, which is no big deal.
But let's be consistent on thedates we're using. I bring that
up because I think most people,that's probably they're entering
their transaction directly fromtheir checking account online,
(23:40):
or their credit card accountsonline. So that's the only
reason why you should keep apeople paper receipt doesn't
make a difference. Not really awhole lot. But it could and may
make a difference on your incometaxes at the end of the year. So
definitely remember that at theend of the year, keep your
(24:01):
receipts for income taxes, whichyou should anyway, so you can
prove what happens. Now whenyou're entering transactions and
every account like you couldhave two or three credit card
accounts in your checkingaccount in your savings account.
Your your bank may do it one waywhere it could say pending
(24:21):
transaction. And it's alreadydeducted from your balance.
That's what my bank does. But ona credit card account or a
different company, which in mycase is a credit card. It'll say
pending transaction and it willshow it there. But it's not a
part of the balance yet. So howare you going to handle that?
(24:44):
What I do since I know ithappened, I go ahead and enter
it in my application my app, butI might use instead of the
current date I might usetomorrow's date so that it's
above every thing out so thatwhen I get everything entered, I
can look on my Trent my roasterfor today, their current day and
(25:10):
see what my balance is to makesure it matches the balance on
the line account or my my creditcard account. For those, I'm
good. And then the other twoitems are tomorrow, they might
clear tomorrow, I may changethem back to today, because
that's when I actually spent themoney. But I don't really have
(25:33):
to unless one at the end of theyear, or close to end of the
month. That's the only two timesthat really matters in the
middle of month, it's not gonnamatter much, because it's not
going to affect anything. Theimportant part here is be
consistent. And you need to makesure that when you do your
entries, you're matched to thepenny to your application that
(25:58):
you're entering in, and what theapplication you're getting the
information from, make sure bothare the same, the balances
should match. If not, you needto find the problem, go back and
find it and fix it. For me, themost common thing is I might
(26:18):
enter a transaction one day, andthen a week later think I didn't
do it, enter it again. And thenmy balance is off. I take the
difference I find $1 amount I godown through Oh, that's in there
twice. And I was there two daysapart, or week apart or a few
days apart. The same place, samedollar amount, just different
(26:42):
dates. I delete one I'm inbounce I'm everybody's happy and
we're good to go. That's my mostcommon mistake, or I make a
thing. Or I might just be off apenny, I might enter the wrong
amount because I'm not payingclose enough attention. So I
look for pennies, I look fordimes, and even, I think good
(27:03):
lately and hadn't had a wholelot of problems. But
occasionally, I have some badtimes where I make a lot of
mistakes. So let's recap. You'redoing the application and you're
doing your tracking so that youcan take control of your money,
and most importantly, yourspending. And you can do your
(27:25):
control center or a budget tosee where your money is going.
That's the reason you're doingall this. If you've been doing
it for a while you should lookfor errors, make sure he didn't
post directly to a headingaccount, or a master account. It
should always be posted to a subaccount, you can do a report and
(27:49):
scroll down through the reportto see where you might have gone
wrong. Or he can just lookthrough your check register. But
I just do all transactions ontheir own. On the rest are just
do all everything. So includesall my my checking my savings
and my credit cards. And I justscroll through it. And I'm just
(28:10):
looking for anything that don'tlook right. I see it, I fix it.
And I keep going as you do yourweekly entry, make sure you're
always in balance with your bankand or the credit card statement
that you're working from. Makesure your dollar amounts match.
Be aware that sometimesdepending on the company that it
(28:33):
might show, and it might show aspending, but it's not a part of
the balance yet. Or it hasn'tbeen deducted from your checking
account yet. Every bank is goingto do it a little different. My
bank shows it pending but it'salready deducted from my
account. My but my credit cardshows pending and it's not
included in that account. Sothey're all they all could be
(28:56):
different. So watch out forthat. Yes. On a regular basis,
review your work and make sureeverything is as accurate as
possible because then that makesyour control center more
accurate and more detailoriginated and you'll get good
information from this little bitextra effort you put into it.
(29:20):
You'll get a lot betterconsistent information, and
you'll be glad you did so
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