Tracking your spending is the key to creating the healthy habits that will result in the creation of your own financial freedom. We believe it's important that you track your spending. The benefits are numerous including:
It keeps you accountable to the spending goals you set yourself.
It empowers you in the moment by helping you see where you are with your money in a month. eg. At any point you should be able to see how much you have spent towards your spending goal and know how much you have left to spend. This enables you to make decisions about what you're going to spend before you walk into any store.
It helps to keep you mindful and intentional with your money.
It supports the creation of the healthy money habit of being in conscious creation and control of your money (above the line) vs being controlled by your money (below the line).
It helps you mark your progress towards your spending goals.
It helps you achieve your financial freedom goals.
How to track My Spending
Whilst we believe that everyone should track their spending, we do not believe that there is only one way to do so. There are a couple of options, and we believe you should pick one and give it a test run. See it as an experiment.
Cash vs Electronic Spending
Some people find that using cash helps them control their spending. The physical experience of withdrawing cash, seeing the finite amount of it in your hands and then counting it to pay helps some people to spend less. It can also be helpful to withdraw cash and divide it up into goal amounts for each spend category and put it into separate envelopes. You then spend only what you have in each envelope on that category of spend. You can keep track with either the Notebook & Pen or Spending Apps options below.
Whether you decide to use cash or electronic spending, the below methods of tracking can be used.
Notebook & Pen
This is the simplest way to track your spending as all you need is a small notebook and pen. You simply write down every time you spend, making a note of where you spent and how much it was for. You can create a page for each category, and deduct your spending as you go to be able to see what you have left to spend each time.
Spending Apps
If you prefer a more high-tech way there are many "Envelope Budgeting" type apps that are great for the purposes of creating specific envelopes for spending. This is especially helpful where you want to use electronic spending vs withdrawing and handling cash.
Two great apps include :
GoodBudget which is available on both iOS and Android. You can create up to 10 Envelopes for free, otherwise it's $7 monthly ($60 annually) if you want more features. This app works manually which is great as it gives you flexibility and freedom to create the envelopes you want and to record only the transactions you want to track.
22Seven which available on both iOS and Android as well as desktop. This app is a free to use full-suite app that can automatically connect to all your bank accounts, credit cards as well as savings and investment accounts and builds a dashboard of your "Living Net Wealth" as well as pulls in all transactions across all your connected accounts too. It still requires some manual work to set it up and allocate transactions to the correct spend plan categories. There is a "Budget" feature which you can then setup with your spend plan category goals.
Your Banking App might include a form of Spending Tracking. Discovery Bank as well as Capitec have this feature for free as part of their app. Try it out!
Spreadsheet
Another electronic way to track your spending, using the envelope system is to use a spreadsheet. We've set one up for you to try. Download FoF Spend Plan Envelope Tracking now.
Create your envelope spend categories by changing the "Envelope Goals" amount (top row of the black shaded section on the right) for each category. If you have a category that isn't listed, then simply overwrite one.
Next, record your income in the first line of the transactions list on the left by completing the date received, company name, for what and envelope spend category and inserting the amount in "Amount - Income".
The top left dark and light green sections will auto-calculate with the information you've entered already showing you how much income you have, your total envelope goals as well as how much has been spent and is remaining and whether you're over or under your spend goals.
Now you list your transactions as you progress through the month making sure to categorise each one. The top left dark green and light green sections will auto calculate.
If you get stuck, feel free to reach out to either Mary J or Marguerite for help.
Once you've picked a way to track your spending, "Mark Complete" to continue.
We LOVE cookies! If we could offer you real cookies to munch whilst you browse our site, we would. Until that's virtually possible we have to inform you that we use browser cookies on our site to give you the most relevant experience. Please click “Accept” to confirm you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Report
There was a problem reporting this post.
Block Member?
Please confirm you want to block this member.
You will no longer be able to:
See blocked member's posts
Mention this member in posts
Invite this member to groups
Message this member
Add this member as a connection
Please note:
This action will also remove this member from your connections and send a report to the site admin.
Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete.
The Benefits of Tracking Spending