Money Smarts 01/11/2010
 
Tracking my spending is the most helpful way to stay on top of my finances. There's something about writing things down and keeping track on paper.  I keep a little basket to drop any receipts in for logging that evening. It's so easy to forget about an expenditure.
 
It has become a game to log every single expenditure every day. The income gets logged too.  I have a chart which I make 12 copies each January to make my daily entries. It's all categorized....even "animal expense" is there. The most fun is at the end of the month, to add it all up and see how the in's and out's went. Do I have a profit or a loss for the month? If there's a loss, I just pull back on one of the spending colums the next month, or take on an extra shift at work.

The bottom line is that I always have a handle of where the hard-earned money is going. Some people don't even know how much they need to make in order to keep their lifestyle going. On the "Simple Budget" page, there's a link for Suzie Orman's interactive tracking worksheet. What other tips and tricks do you have to share?