At the end of August, a very patient Stephanie sent me an interesting question. When I didn’t answer her e-mail, she sent it again in January. I replied, promising to post her question while I was in Africa — but I didn’t get to it. Now it’s April. I think it’s time to set things right. Here’s what Stephanie has to say:
For a year now, I’ve tracked every single penny that comes and goes from my bank account. I now have over 365 days of detailed financial data about my earnings, spending, etc. Now that I have all of this information, what do I do with it? What are some methods for evaluating, adjusting, and creating a solid budget based on your history?
For a long time, I tracked every penny I spent. Then I stopped for about a year. Now, in 2011, I’m back to tracking my expenses. Why? Because knowing where my money is going helps me make course corrections and plan for the future.
I’m sure everyone does different things with the numbers they track. Because I’ve been using Quicken for a decade, most of my number-crunching is based on the reports that program provides.
For instance, I like to take several years of data and look at quarterly summaries of my spending by category. This helps me spot trends quickly. It might, for instance, help me see that I spent $250 on gas for the Mini in winter 2010, but only $150 in winter 2011. When I see changes like this, I can dig deeper to see if there’s a reason. (Aha! I was in Africa for three weeks in February 2011. And in winter 2010, I made two longish trips.)
I’ve also learned to be sure that my spending fits within the Balanced Money Formula. I don’t keep a detailed budget, but I do like to use a broad budget framework. With the Balanced Money Formula, I want less than 50% of my after-tax income to be spent on needs, such as housing and groceries and transportation. I also want more than 20% of my income to go to savings. There should be about 30% left over, and I can use that as I please.
Once I have enough data, there’s a game I like to play. In my mind, I call it “how low can you go?” The concept is simple: I’ll choose a category — “dining out”, for instance — and then spend several months or a year trying to reduce how much I spend there.
These are just a few of the ways I use the data I collect after tracking my spending. I also use the numbers to calculate how much I want to save for retirement every year, to figure out how much I can afford to put into my travel account, and so on. In a way, having all of these numbers is like playing with a bunch of building blocks. Using the information, I can try to re-arrange my spending in new ways, ways that better help me meet my goals.
Enough about my methods! Let’s hear about yours. If you track your spending, what do you do with the information you collect? Do you act on it at all? Or is it just waiting for the day that you need it? If you do act on the info, what sorts of things do you do? Do you use the numbers to help you create a budget? Direct your saving? Make adjustments to your spending? How can Stephanie use her records to help her build a better financial future?
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I’ve tracked ever single penny I’ve spent since I entered the full time workforce about 4 years ago. I have all my data saved in a series of spreadsheets I use to track my finances. My main reason for tracking my finances on such a detailed basis is that this doubles as my checkbook register. It’s how I make sure my accounts are balanced.
The benefits I get from this data:
– I am able to see a history of my net worth, which is great, because most of my financial goals center around growing my liquidity, my retirement assets, and my overall net worth. These can all be tracked via the data I collect.
– I get to see if my spending over time matches up with what I say my values are. I think we have a tendency so say we value certain things, but if you carefully analyze our spending, it might reveal that we value something totally different. Analyzing my spending this closely actually helps me learn things about myself.
– Lastly, since we plan for my wife to stay home when we have kids, I can analyze our historical spending levels to understand if this is even possible, and what areas might be good targets to cut back in. Having 4 years of actual data to make a decision like this is very helpful, rather than coming up with some sort of projections. (past spending is the best predictor of future spending.
That’s what I use all my data for. But to be honest, tracking my spending so closely is also just a hobby of mine. I love working on my spreadsheets!
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That is just awesome! You are correct that observing your past spending patterns will greatly aid you for years to come. I have been using Quicken for about a decade. I do quarterly budgets that reference the prior year. This enables me to really zero in on wasteful spending and maximize my resources.
Great post!
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I keep the records in a spreadsheet of my own design. I review them occasionally to look at the trends and see where I’m being careless about spending. However, for me the real value is knowing that I have the information there. Currently I don’t feel the need to strictly follow a budget, as I have no debt and substantial savings. However, if something happened that required me to severely restrict my spending, I think having that information available would be very useful for planning purposes.
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I think Stephanie’s question raises an important issue. Tracking something doesn’t change it. It may provide you with data to base a change on, but just tracking won’t usually cause the change. I also think it’s worth thinking about what you want to change before tracking. Are you only interested in broad spending categories? Do you want to be able to drill down to the last penny? That might help you plan the tracking.
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J.D., I use my tracked data much like you do. I look for trends to see if I’m spending too much in any areas. If I am, then I focus on making adjustments to that area. If I don’t see areas that I’m overspending, I might look for areas that aren’t as meaningful to me and see if I can save money there.
I also use the information to help me figure out what I might need for retirement to calculate how much I should be saving.
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I think Stephanie has to take a step back and ask herself what kind of changes (if any), she plans to make to her finances. Ie Does she want to save more money?
Then, she can use her financial data to help her determine more specifically how to reach her goals (ie cut restaurant spending by N%).
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I agree. I track my spending to aid in budgeting. I have a habit of making a budget where I look at all of my income and decide where it should go. It works great and in many ways this is the essence of budgeting. However, I often will cut a category too steeply for what I “like to live with” (if I lost my job, it would be different). It used to be that I’d spend months tweaking to correct my too-tight areas. But then I discovered if I looked at my historical spending in light of my proposed new budget, I could easily highlight the areas where I was making major changes (did I cut my spending money in half or go from $70 a week in eating out to $10?). I find this comparison and resulting tweaking to the budget to make the “breaking in ” time on the actual budget much easier and shorter. It also allows me to be able to more easily budget in seasonal trends (like summer vs winter gas prices). Good luck on your own project!
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I have used the tracked data to find areas where my money “leaks”. I had no idea how much we were spending on eating out before we tracked. Not even eating out meals…the little trips my husband took to the soda machine or the times I picked up a smoothie after working out were really adding up. I realized groceries were a little out of hand too. Tracking allows me to tighten up our spending so we can more easily save for the bigger things we want (like travel or home improvements).
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I’m so pleased you mentioned there are many options for tracking spending and budgets. Too often, the ‘gurus’ give the impression there is one way–theirs– and any other method will not bring positive results. Thanks for letting readers know that as long as your method works for you, it doesn’t how you do the work as long as you’re doing the work.
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My husband and I tracked our spending going on 3 years now.
We use this information at the end of the year to decide if we need to change our budget. Ie do we want to spend less or need more for groceries? Do we have fixed expenses we can get rid of?
We are in the midst of paying down student loans too. So if we get under budget in our monthly spending categories anything extra goes to an ugly sutdent loan.
Basically if you track your spending and compare it to what you budget, use the excess to pay down debt, a vaca fund, a house downpayment fund…
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I round up my all my expenses to the nearest 10,000 Euros and divide all outgoing expenditures into three categories: Girls, cannabis, and other. It’s good to know what money I’m using to further my enjoyment of life, and what I’m just pissing away on bills. Even a playboy needs a budget.
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I like your priorities.
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What I try to do is keep track of my money (both spending and income), and consolidate quarterly and annual summaries of my spending. I then use these numbers to write an annual report, recording what I did right (and why), what I did wrong (and why), how and why I changed from last year, and whether I met the goals I set for myself in LAST year’s report, and choosing new goals for myself. Actually writing up the report really helps, because I can’t actually see things from a glance, just from the numbers, but I CAN review the report whenever I feel lost, and go oh, YEAH, THAT’S what I want to do.
By tracking where my money comes from, and goes, I can get a feel for what needs improvement, or what I can guess future spending to be like.
This year, for example, I’m planning on both paying off my student loans (hooray!) and buying a house, so that’s two different categories of spending that are going to be VERY different. But I can use my years of data to predict that while my monthly housing expenses and bills will go up, I will no longer be making loan payments, and I estimate that there will be not much net change. (And the amount I’m saving each month for a downpayment will just transform into what I’m saving for house repairs or mortgage prepayments).
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I track every penny and I budget AND forecast that way too. My spreadsheet is at the week level and I always have one for the current quarter and the next quarter. By having my budget at the week level, I can plan well in advance where my paychecks are going to go and then see the ripple effect over the next several months.
It works really well for people who are tight and living check to check. With the forecasting side (a sort of sandbox with actual and budget combined in my case), you can punch in a number for that weekend you’d like to take. If any week’s ending balance goes negative, you have a clear indicator that something has to change to keep yourself afloat.
Its probably more work than most people are willing to deal with, but it really got me a clear view of our finances and helped get us out of overdraft traps and unpaid bills.
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I track my expenses and use it to find trends, changes, etc.
But the primary reason for me and the one that I think is often overlooked in these discussions is exactly what Bogey mentioned up there – checking my spending against my values. Am I putting my money where my heart is?
So within that broad category of “wants” – I may know that what I care about is food and travel. And yet my first tracking showed that I spent as much or more on alcohol/clubs as nice restaurants. So we changed our behavior. Having that tracking data helps me make sure I’m spending my money consciously – both in each moment and in the bigger picture.
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I track every penny and in many categories. Re: overspending I look mostly at the big picture – total spending vs. total income. For the small categories I’m more concerned about being able to calculate personal inflation, amounts needed for FI and comparisons between living situations. I track networth and investment income vs. spending similar to Your Money or Your Life, as I like the charts and to feel I’m making progress.
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We are data trackers as well. It is hard to know how Stephanie should use her data since we don’t know where she is with her finances or what her goals are.
(1) We initially used our data to help us figure out where we could cut so that we could throw extra money at our debt. We also used our early data to help us come up with a spending plan.
(2) Once we had paid off $55,000 in unsecured debt, we continued to track our spending so we could figure out how to find more money for savings.
(3) 2011 is year 5 of tracking and year 5 of spending plan and year 5 of not using credit cards, and we still use our data to help us maintain and to help us meet our savings goals. I’m a trend watcher and my goal is to try and keep our recurring expenses flat and to try and keep our day to day household expneses flat if we can. I also watch out trending to see where we are spiking on home improvement, entertainment and my shoppoing, three categories that can creep up if we let it.
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I use the data for periodic evaluation, usually monthly. The questions I ask are this:
- Is this how I want to be spending my money?
- Does this spending reflect my values?
- How has this changed from last month/year? Is this the change I wanted? etc.
It helps to fight lifestyle inflation, set goals, and be sure you’re spending on the things you want to be spending on.
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I use expense records to refine my budget.
Regular monthly expenses are in the front of mind and have reasonably predictable amounts, but I was underbudgeting for those expenses that crop up maybe once a year. I was ending up with bills that would have to come out of my tight “operating” budget, or worse, I would borrow from my emergency fund.
Now I have small allocations in my monthly budget to build up a separate annual amount for this kind of thing. At the end of each year I review my budget and tweak these amaounts. And it’s outside of my emergency fund – which I now only use for truly unexpected things.
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We use software to track our money. Once you start, it’s easy balancing to the centif you regularly compare to your bank account.
Yes, this is very anal retentive, but financial awareness is the first step to gaining control.
As for using the data. I find it useful to compare expenditure to national averages, to see if we are spending too much in any category. The USDA has a resource: Expenditures on Children by Families 2006. It takes some number crunching but is very revealing.
It breaks the nation into zones, and looks at average spending based on family structure. You need to adjust the figures for inflation, and simply compare to your own data. It will help you identify areas that need attention.
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I have tracked every penny for years. The benefits are:
1) I find the act of recording spending encourages more thrift. I am aware of costs so I weigh purchase carefully.
2) I am aware of jumps in cost before I might see the affect, e.g., diesel (I drive a diesel) has soared in cost, and I immediately saw the consequences and I am trying to conserve as well as save elsewhere to contain the damage.
3) Recently my propane bill for summer hot water and cooking fuel was very high, by tracking costs and amount used for each fill up, I was able to negotiate a better discount.
Personally, I have never had success with ‘budgets’ but tracking spending/income/usage all help me create an inner awareness of costs, which in turn helps me control them.
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We don’t track every pennies. It was just too much work for me previously. However, I’m taking 3 months off from work so now I have a bit of time to do a few more things and this is one of them. We are pretty good and minimize spending so it will be good to see the real numbers.
I’ve been using Mint, but we use cash quite a bit too so I’m using excel to help with those purchases.
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I just started tracking in January and was amazed to discover that I am spending $500 a month just in gas! I have used the data to keep my spending on track so I quit spending more than I take home.
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We also use Quicken. And we abide by the 60% solution. So essentially we track our money only to make sure that we are staying the course.
Our spending categories are braod yet concise (cash, gasoline, utilities, golf, groceries, and misc.) so analyzing our expenses at the end of the month is not tedious at all. The reports are useful in predicting expenses for the upcoming month. For example, we can look at last February to see what our heating bills for this February will likely be.
Just a word about one report I’ve set up in Quicken labeled “living below our means”. This creates a monthly bar graph of income/expenses. It’s satisfying to visually confirm that we are indeed spending much less than we bring home.
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My only issue with that income vs expenses report is that I have my credit cards set up as accounts in Quicken too, and therefore a credit card payment is not seen as expense but rather as a transfer of funds. Therefore if I bring home $1000 per paycheck and $500 gets spent on bills and $400 gets sent to the credit card and $500 gets put on the card, Quicken thinks I’m breaking even–but really I’m racking up debt. (I combat this by making a point of staying within budget on each spending category, and watching my net worth. But that’s why I stopped following that income vs expense report.)
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Wow – a lot of thoughtful responses already. Thanks J.D. for posting my question!
My financial situation is pretty solid – mostly because I’m pretty frugal by nature, but also thanks to the increased awareness that comes from tracking my expenses daily. I do have about $20,000 in student loans, but I’ve recently increased those payments so I don’t feel overwhelmed by the debt. As reflected in other comments, aligning my spending with my personal values (i.e. travel and continuing education) is incredibly important to me.
As SF_UK alludes to above and as J.D. mentions in his response, I’m now looking for ways apply this data: how should I be comparing my spending across weeks, months years, etc. and how can I change my spending patterns to better reflect my goals. Noticing that my grocery bills have increased by 10% over the last few months is useful by itself, but it’s not going to actually change my behavior. How do I get from trend spotting to taking action?
Thanks for the suggestions – keep them coming!
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Stephanie,
Thanks for asking a great question! This is the kicker for all of us — how to change habits. To judge by the comments, awareness (which is raised through tracking spending) works as a prompt to action for some people, but to judge by your asking the question, awareness isn’t quite enough of a prompt for you. So you need a goal that really matters to you. You’ve said you are paying down the student loan faster, but aside from that you don’t list any specific goals (only priorities), so it’s hard to make suggestions.
I think the best way to start acting is, well, to act. Maybe pick one goal — reducing your grocery bill by 10% for a month — and just decide that this month you’re going to try five different ways to achieve it (shop at two new stores, try using coupons, start a price book, compare this year’s and last year’s food receipts to see whether prices are going up, etc). That way the tracking has a specific purpose: it can tell you whether you are achieving your goal or not.
Or you might decide that you want to pay off the loans as fast as possible. That way the tracking keeps you excited about your progress. (Have you seen Krystal’s website? http://www.givemebackmyfivebucks.com) This is what I’m doing with my mortgage. I don’t track my spending to the penny, but I have projected how to pay off my mortgage before 2019, and created my budget around that. When I look at my spending, I track how I’m doing at reaching that goal.
But only you can decide what your goals should be. We can’t do that for you.
I agree with the folks who suggested reading Your Money or Your Life — great book!
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My approach would be similar to Paul’s ^^^
I would tell her to look at the percentages of where her money is going, and if she’s not pleased with where her money is going, then create a plan to change that. I would stress the importance of giving and saving, and then living well within her means after that.
After so many months of tracking her expenses, she should be able to create quite the robust and accurate budget.
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Other than a few quickly failed attempts, I’ve never bothered tracking every penny. I found that, while discretionary spending *was* an issue, I was able to address it at a higher level within my overall budget. I didn’t really need to know whether $12.38 was for toiletries or for buying a bottle of wine. I just needed to know whether or not the $12.38 was money that I was free to spend or whether it was money that was needed for other purposes. (Bills, savings, etc)
What I did for my budget was I started with writing down all my fixed bills. In the case of variable costs like our electric bill, I figured out what the highest bill was that we’d paid, and then added a 10% contingency to that amount. I then spent a while playing with my weekly “allowance” so that I could figure out an amount that covered my general needs, but still fit within the confines of my budget. I did review my spending for a year, and made note of the expenses that were less consistent–birthday and holiday gifts, vacations, car repairs, hair cuts, and other occasional costs. I budget those as “other”, and keep track of which ones may be coming up soon.
In terms of keeping spending modest, I play a little monthly game with myself. At the start of the month, I calculate where I will end up if I follow my budget precisely. I then see if I can come in with a greater amount left over. I also take the remains of my weekly discretionary funds and if they are small, I add them to my “Fun Fund” (if they are large, I use them for the next week’s budget). The Fun Fund is great, bc every year or so, I cash it in and get to go buy something that I otherwise couldn’t afford.
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I’m similar to Nancy. I tracked my expenses for a few months (writing them down on paper), and then figured out how much I was spending on non-bills per week (this includes: food, pet food, gas and car stuff like oil changes and wiper blades, haircuts, clothes, coffee, etc.). Then I lowered the total (to $150), designated a dollar amount for pets ($50 — one has health issues) and car ($50), and put the remainder ($50) as my personal allowance for food, clothes, etc. It has worked for me.
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I guess I’m a little strange after reading this post. I keep track of everything, and break them down into categories I can remember (especially for sinking items like car insurance, life insurance, and yes, even furnace filters!).
I use http://www.youneedabudget.com, and it’s awesome! I just click a dropdown in the category, and it instantly gives me an average over the last 3 and 12 months. I use those two numbers to determine what I should budget for that category for this month. I look at why one could be higher than the other, just like you. YNAB has reports too, but this gives you a quick trend without even leaving the budget screen. It’s so easy that sometimes I just check it to remind myself how much I’ve averaged.
So I guess I’m weird, because I have about 40-50 categories I track. Most of them stay the same every month, but it helps me know exactly where my money goes.
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You’re not *that* weird! I do that too.
I find that by breaking things down into more categories, I can budget better. For example, instead of budgeting $X for clothing for the month or the year, I budget for A pairs of jeans, B tops, C bras, D pairs of underwear, E dresses, F shoes, G pairs of socks, and $H for sports wear. That way, I have a strong explanation for where the number came from and I’m much more liable to stick to it!
On the other hand, I found that microtracking how much I spend on dinners and drinks out with friends, books, movies, etc., it was really stressing me out. So now I just budget for $X “Entertainment” and don’t budget within it, though I do look to see what I’m spending that on each month. I suppose you could call that $X for “adult allowance” each month, but I keep it in my checking account since it’s just me.
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My husband and I have tracked spending in some categories for years, but just 3 months ago went back to tracking every penny. We had not realized how much we were spending on groceries until we got detailed with our tracking. It has helped us cut back on grocery spending significantly, freeing up more money to pay down remaining credit card debt. Once that is gone, it will help boost our savings.
We also track every penny we spend on vacations by writing the days expenses each night of vacation in a separate mini-register, including airfare. This way we can more accurately budget for future vacations.
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If anyone is looking for a free iPhone app to track, I recently downloaded “I’m Worth It.” It lets you put in goals and track money in, money out by goal or by category. Not fancy, but cute, free and good for tracking cash.
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I keep track of my expenses online at http://www.RecurTrack.com. I then take the data I get from this and create a budget (with the values on the budget being my goals). It helps me to look at what I am spending and the categories that I need to cut back on.
For instance, my wife and I tend to spend too much on eating out and groceries. Well, tracking the expenses and creating the budget help to hold us accountable for where we are spending our money, and we can adjust for our spending habits.
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I found tracking my grocery spending to be an interesting exercise, and not for the reason I thought I would!
Before I started tracking it, I stressed a lot over it. I felt like I *knew* how much we were spending on groceries, and it was way too much.
So I tracked it over a 4 month time period, September through December. These months are usually high spending grocery months for us- we stock up on a lot of products before winter comes, we make food-based gifts for holidays, the weather’s getting colder and we spend more on food, etc.
Much to my surprise, I discovered that our grocery bills we actually a) remarkably consistent, and b) not a big chunk of our budget AT ALL. 350/month, even with the expense of kosher meat. In short, I’d been causing myself (and my hubby) stress over what was a really manageable and reasonable part of our budget.
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I think what you do with the data depends entirely on where you’re at financially and what your goals are. If you are saving enough to meet your goals and happy with your lifestyle then the data is just interesting…If, however, you are not where you want to be, it can help you identify areas where you can reduce expenses and direct more funds towards your goals.
We used to budget closely, but now that a lot of our financial goals have been met (debt-free) and we are saving enough to meet our other goals I don’t worry about the small categories any more and just make sure our monthly expenses as a whole fall within the range we’ve set out.
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I’ve been tracking my expenses on an Excel spreadsheet for about three years. The information helps to remind me that I do not have an unlimited amount of money to spend as I please. I have been able to pinpoint where I tend to spend when I’m not paying attention (eating out at restaurants, clothes, shoes, STUFF in general). By tracking my spending, I hold myself accountable.
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I just started tracking every dollar I spend 6 months ago. Every Sunday, I enter them into a spreadsheet, totaling each category (food, transportation, savings, etc) for the week. This lets me stay within budget each month and adjust if there are unexpected expenses (like a hefty parking ticket 2 months ago).
However, I don’t think this information has much long-term use, financially. It’s like checking account information–you can probably dispose of it after it’s 1-3 years old, depending on your needs.
That said, emotionally, I think it might be a real morale booster to see how far you’ve come over the years.
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Tracking spending in detail openned my eyes to things I hadn’t been paying much attention to. For example, I’d grossly underestimated how much we were paying for school activities, personnel care, and car repair/maintenance. I’d based much of my guestimates on my personal habits and memory versus real data. Additionally my spouse was spending many an afternoon lunching with her buddies, more so than she estimated. Additionally I found some leaks of small amounts of recurring payments. So that allowed us to set up some reasonable limits to put more money towards debt. It also created an incentive to look for further reductions in some of our monthly bills.
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I’ve been tracking for almost 4 years now. I rarely go through and look at what I spend or where my money goes. It’s more just a habit at this point. I’ve also always been good at spending within my means, so I haven’t had to worry about that.
One interesting thing that this information has allowed me to do, is check on when I bought items. This can be useful to see if an item is still under warranty. Or if you’ve had it longer than you thought.
For example, I recently bought myself a couple of new (expensive) sweatshirts. I love the ones I was replacing, but the zipper was completely broken on one of them and so it was toast. I was able to confirm when I originally bought the sweatshirts (Sept 2009). (And let me stress that my normal outfit is jeans, t-shirt and sweatshirt.) So I got a good year and a half out of them (one which I can still wear) and that makes them worth the expense.
So they may be expensive (to me anyway) but for the cost, I can get a lot of wear out of them.
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That’s one of my favorite features about Quicken, too… so much easier to track the last time I paid my sister for something, or what that doctor’s name was, or when we bought our computer.
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Does anyone know of an Android App you can use to track your money? I’m thinking of something like the food journal I use (Calorie Counter), only it’s a money journal. A notebook gets lost in my purse, same with receipts.
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EEBA for android. Based on the envelope budgeting system. I love the concept. Honestly though, I don’t use it very consistently.
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I’ve been tracking by notebook and spreadsheet since 2007. In the beginning, by reviewing categories at the end of the month using the YMOYL method, I was able to trim my living expenses to under $1k a month and pay off all my debt with the extra money. Nowadays, I’m using it for planning (FSA,retirement,down-payment) and as a motivator for more savings. I also have the wall chart. I haven’t stuck to the YMOYL reviews like I used to, but they are probably the most effective way to reduce your consumption.
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I’ve tracked expenses for years and find it helpful to make sure my money is supporting my values instead of just disappearing on junk. My husband hates it so he gets an “allowance” that he doesn’t have to track. It makes me a little crazy to have that hole in my records but it’s saved our marriage.
I encourage my clients to track expenses so they can find money to leverage to buy a home. For example, the Federal Home Loan Bank of NY offers a matched savings program for first time home buyers. Qualified people who save a set figure each month can have their savings matched by $4 for every $1 saved.
For my home buying clients, tracking their expenses is the first step to finding that money they can put into the matched savings program. Most folks are amazed to find how much money is slipping through the cracks and knowing it could receive a match that will help them eventually have a house down payment is a great incentive to start saving.
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I’ve been doing this tracking for a few months now and I tend to agree with Stephanie. It’s not useful. I haven’t been able to find anything useful to do with it, and none of J.D.’s reasons sound compelling.
Being able to go back a year from now and try to work out some oddity only to realize I was on vacation sounds like a waste of time, not like it helps me with anything.
I don’t think the “balanced money formula” is useful (or even based on anything at all, actually). Especially over long periods of time — imagine you put 20% of your income into a savings account for 5 years, and at the end of the five years, you use it to buy a house. What’s you net savings after 5 years and 1 month? It’s 0. Are you complying with the balanced money formula’s 20% savings rule or not?
This image is a screenshot from Quicken showing my spending so far this year. I can’t think of a single thing to do with it. The obvious first reply will be “you could save money by spending less on dining out”. I realize that. I don’t care, I like dining out and have neither the desire nor the need to reduce that number.
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Tyler,
I think the balanced money formula (bmf) isn’t an indication of how much or what percentage of your money you have accumulated. rather, it’s a breakdown of how your money can be apportioned as you receive it and use it. (I won’t say ‘should be’ because it’s a rule of thumb to aid in budgeting your income) So, it strikes me as irrelevant whether you use the 20% you saved for a house or whatever. The fact is that you “saved” 20% of your income, thus allowing you to make the purchase in the first place, as opposed to saving only 10% or 5%. If you saved 25% or 30%, God bless you! Once you buy that house, the mortgage payments will become a part of the needs category, or 50% of your income. If you do not buy too much house, you should still be able to save 20% going forward from the purchase of the house. if you can’t, it’s a goal to work toward by either shifting your wants to a lower percentage or finding additional sources of income to bolster your savings category.
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So what is “savings” then?
Say I bring home $5,000/month. On the first of each month, I receive my paycheck, and I transfer $1,000 from my checking account to a savings account.
Then next month, on the 1st, I transfer that $1,000 back to my checking account. I saved it for a month, right?
What if I do this every month? Am I saving anything? The first of each month I “save” 20% of this month’s salary and then “unsave” my savings for last month.
It sounds ridiculous, right?
What if you save $1,000 each month, and only “unsave” it quarterly, in $3,000 increments? Does that count as saving? What if you wait five years so you can buy a house?
What if you don’t wait at all and buy a house today for no money down (assuming that you could still do that)? Are your mortgage payments “savings” or “needs”?
Assume the following scenario:
You take home $4,000/month. You have non-housing expenses of $1,000.
Option 1)
You save $1,000/month for ten years. At the same time, you spend $1,000/month on rent. At the end of the ten years, you pay cash for a $120,000 house. In the meantime the “balanced money formula” says you have:
50% needs (rent + expenses)
25% savings (for the house)
25% wants (whatever’s left over)
So yay, you’re doing a good job.
Option 2) A rich relative gives you an interest free loan for $240,000, which you are expected to pay back at a rate of $2,000/month for 10 years. You immediately purchase a $240,000 house with this money.
You now have:
75% needs (mortgage payment + expenses)
0% savings
25% wants (leftover)
Boo, now you’re a bad saver according to the balanced money formula even though the second option is clearly financially preferable, as you save $120,000 otherwise spent on rent, and end up with a house that’s twice as nice for the same total outlay.
What counts as “needs” vs “savings” vs “wants” is entirely fungible and it makes this formula useless.
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Tyler,
The balanced money formula isn’t concerned with your net worth. It’s a rule of thumb to make sure you’re not overextended in your long-term commitments. I believe Elizabeth Warren and her daughter define “needs” as legal commitments or things you must have to live in safety and dignity. The idea is that in an emergency, you could almost immediately cut saving and spending on wants from your budget.
The problem isn’t that Option 2 (buying the house upfront and making mortgage payments) is bad math. It’s that it’s dangerous. With option 1, if I lost my job, I could stop saving for a house and live off my emergency savings– presumably at the rate of 50% of my old salary. With option 2, I might end up losing the house.
As with all personal finance “rules,” if it doesn’t work for you, don’t use it. But I’ve found the 50-30-20 formula to be very helpful and reassuring when I assess my budget.
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What Emily said about the Warren book. If you read the book, it’s talking about fixed expenses vs. variable expenses– if you lost your job, would you be able to meet your monthly obligations. It’s really about not over-extending yourself and not feeling guilty about having a reasonable amount of fun.
We also don’t track. And our money is in balance these days, though in graduate school we spent 50% on housing, but that happens when you’re low income in an expensive city.
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I agree that for the most part it does not do much good to track expenses unless you are trying to find areas to cut back on. If you are spending less than you earn, who cares if you could save $20 a month by eating out less.
I do however find it useful for estimating irregular expenses for the year like car registration, gifts, car maintenance, etc. I could probably estimate ok without doing it but I’m sure I would forget something. In order for it to work though you have to track for at least a year.
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Tyler have you read Your Money or Your Life? It shows you what to do with the data as a part of the bigger picture. You assign values to your categories to see if spending in dining out would go up or down with retirement. So for you, it may actually go up and you would recognize that and find a way to incorporate as part of your plan. YMOYL helps you get to the point where your investments are making more than your monthly expenses and helps to project that time period.
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How on earth could reading that book possibly help me to predict whether or not I’ll spend more at restaurants 35 years from now?
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I think tracking every cent is overrated. For one thing, like several other people have mentioned, just because you’re tracking it doesn’t mean you’re doing something smart with it.
Sure, it will show you ways to cut back- but then what? Most people are just not good savers. They may cut back on eating out so they can buy more clothes. They’re still spending just as much money, but just being more intentional.
As far as saving for 5 years then buying a home- sure you don’t have 5 years of savings anymore, but you have equity in a home. And if you bought intelligently, that equity can be leveraged for more money if necessary.
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Tracking your spending is a discernment tool – data is just data unless you interpret it! I follow the advice from _Your Money or Your Life_ on this one. Each month I review, and ask: Did I get value, satisfaction, and fulfillment in proportion to what I spent in this category? My goal is to reduce my overall spending, but in a sane way, so that I can both SAVE and GIVE more.
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I don’t track, I find it annoying and useless. I just set aside what I need for my bills, and what I’d like to save, and spend the rest. I adjust my savings upwards occasionally; every once in a while it gets uncomfortable and I have to adjust it back down, but mostly it stays. I have retirement savings, which of course I don’t touch; emergency savings, which I tapped for a new roof last year; and general savings, which comes and goes.
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I track it, but that’s just part of the equation. The real help is forecasting for the current month. Create a plan for where you WILL spend your money, and then do your best to stick to it. That’s what the real benefit is. You get to tell your money where to go, instead of wondering where it all went.
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I track as it’s a hobby of mine, and helps me plan for the next few months as I know what I’m likely to spend on certain things without really thinking about it.
I also keep one of those income / expense charts that Your Money or Your Life says to do and it’s neat seeing the peaks and troughs (January and February are always brutal spending months, for instance).
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I started using Quicken and Excel to track everything down to the penny (literally, I had both a Cash account and a Piggy Bank account!) when I neglected to record a check in my register in college and caused a cascade of five overdraft charges. (Because I used my debit card four times in the two days after said check was deducted before I got WaMu’s letter… thank goodness for email notifications nowadays!!) Anyway, my then-boyfriend, now-husband got me all set up and tracking my income and expenses. I’ve been hooked on personal finance ever since. In fact, my personal use of Excel during this time helped me realize my real passion for spreadsheets and numbers and changed my career goal from teaching to accounting. Anyway, after counting my every penny and figuring out my averages and tracking “Expected/Actual/Difference” for 3 years, I finally realized I no longer NEEDED to. It had just become a habit to spend consciously. Now that we’re married, we still use Quicken, but no longer waste time tracking every penny. It’s enough to use their built-in reports to spot trends and make better financial decisions. I just wish I could figure out how to use Quicken to set up our paychecks, mortgage, and retirement accounts. It never seems to work out right!
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In my experience, PROJECTING can be more useful, practical, and empowering than TRACKING. A tool like Debtinator (http://www.bassetsoftware.com/), for example, has helped my wife and I avert financial meltdown in recent years. It lets us input our debts and estimated expenses, log our spending, and — most important — it project how to pay down those debts with our “extra” money. We can set target dates, choose different plans, and easily make quantifiable choices. It’s been very empowering to run scenarios for our financial future — from weighing the after-effects of a single purchase through to paying off one card or loan versus another to upping our weekly food budget to investing another $25 a paycheck in retirement. Highly recommended. Mac only, though.
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I like to look at the information and identify trouble spots when life gets hectic and the finances take a back burner. For instance, I am currently eight months pregnant with my second baby, but during the first 3-4 months I had round the clock morning sickness. Using the information I’ve tracked and charted I can see that our dining out totals TRIPLED while I was sick.
What can I do with that information? I can use it to plan better. For instance, when we start trying for baby #3, I can batch cook a bunch of meals and put them in the freezer. That way, when I’m good for nothing but keeping the couch warm with a bottle of ginger ale, my family can just heat up something from the freezer.
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I’ve tracked our expenses in Quicken for 11 years now, since we got married. I use it at tax time to make sure I enter all our charitable contributions, and both my spouse and I use it randomly to see whether any of our expenses are trending up without our realizing it.
@Pamela, I feel for you since my spouse is also on the mystery cash program and seeing the “Cash” category as one of our top ones is sorta annoying! But it’s a fixed amount each week and we’re saving money, so I use it as a reminder to not get too obsessed with this tracking thing.
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Yeah, RP, I think there’s a tracking gene that some people have and others don’t.
But my husband’s allowance is pretty small. Most expenses are joint so I can keep records of nearly everything.
The allowance is for soda, candy bars, street musicians, and people holding up signs by the side of the road. It’s certainly not enough for fast women and cocaine.
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Yep, for the spouse, it’s eating out at lunch, mainly, but our Quicken categories are fine-grained enough that even $100/week makes it onto the pie charts. I suppose I should be glad that our mortgage interest is not a whole lot bigger than that, and that all our utilities are lower!
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My husband and I track all our expenses on an Excel sheet, and by using the envelope system.
We just started this in January. So far, we’ve seen the following benefits:
-We don’t go over our budget on fun money anymore, but we still have enough fun money to enjoy life.
-We are able to save up months in advance for large expenses.
-I no longer feel guilty about spending money because I know that’s what the money is for.
-We have a clear view of how much money we should have left over at the end of each month, so we can plan in advance how much of that we want to save and how much we might consider spending. This month, for example, we realized we’ll have enough leftover to get our dogs fixed at the vet, paint the living room, and still have a good amount left over for savings. Before tracking, we wouldn’t have realized this until the end of the month.
So in a nutshell… we haven’t changed our budget or habits because of it. It has mainly helped us to plan ahead and feel better about our spending. The mental benefits have been incredible, while our finances have remained much the same so far.
As for the future, I think it will help us to avoid lifestyle inflation. My husband is in school now, but when he starts working later this year, we should be able to send his entire paycheck (plus some of mine) directly into savings. Without our Excel sheet (and GRS), we very well might have just considered that to be more spending money.
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I completely agree with you Laura. I started using a detailed budget in September 2010 (before that, it was just “keep total expenses other than rent and cell phone under $X” each month) and the most useful aspect of that to me is that I don’t feel guilty about spending money on stuff because I planned on spending money on that stuff.
I also think that this will help reduce lifestyle inflation since my monthly budget is somewhat fixed at this point and doesn’t vary that much anymore, so when I get pay raises, they’ll just get directed to savings.
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I have been tracking my expenses for about 3 years using my own excel spreadsheet. I find this extremely valuable. It takes about 30 minutes a month to update. I copy and paste bank statements and keep a list of expenditures for cash. There is a sheet for each month and a summary sheet for the entire year.
We track around 30 different sub-categories that are divided major categories: income, taxes, committed expenses, variable expenses, and charity.
The sheet also automatically graphs income, savings, and expenses each month. It is really motivating to have a visual of our savings versus expenses.
At the bottom of the sheet we have a summary of all of our savings and retirement accounts. These are updated at the end of each month to track net worth.
We don’t budget, but we know roughly how much we will spend each month and year for each category. I think the application of this, as Stephanie was wondering, is to make informed decisions and exercise conscious spending. For example, this past month we purchased air fares to see family. We know we spend so much on travel per year and can afford this. Another example would be if car repairs start adding up, it would be time to consider a newer used car.
Also, if anyone says there is not inflation, I differ. Our monthly expenditures on gas and groceries are definitely going up. Knowing this helps us gauge and prepare for the future.
One of the reasons why I track expenses is so that I can enjoy the occasional conscious purchases that we make without feeling guilty about it (for me a good glass of red wine). We have tried to reduce the small daily things that add up (coffee, soda, and eating lunch out). We would rather use this money for something we will remember, such as travel to see family.
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Working in retail as a teen, you always compared to Last Year. What volume did the store do on this date last year? Then the goal was to beat it. I do this with my broad spending categories. $700 on groceries in 04/10; then I try to come in under that for 04/11. For me, it helps that it is a brief window, and a game. I get easily overwhelmed, but I can look at a month at a time and play the game. Also, months tend to repeat trends. . . LOTS of travel in May and June. Reunions, weddings, etc. It makes no sense to compare travel in May to travel in February. Compare it to May of last year. Same thing with “Gift” spending in October & November.
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This is a really good idea! I’m going to give it a try.
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Agreed – a great idea! (As a former twentysomething retail worker myself, I should’ve thought of that!)
~F.
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