Let's do this! All that expense tracking you've been doing, time to try adding it up! Here's a video where I explain a little more about it, but the basic concept is:
1. Create a list of categories that make sense to you,
2. Assign a category to each expense you have been tracking, and
3. Start to add up how much you spend in each category, over the course of a week, or ideally, a month.
Here are some basic categories:
Home/Shelter/Rent
Food
Transportation
Clothing
Kids
Pets
Spiritual/Donations
Books/Entertainment
Taxes
Debt repayment
There are many more possibilities--use the categories that make sense to you.
To do this process, it can be as simple as using a piece of paper. Or use a notebook, your money journal, a ledger like the one I show in the video, or make a copy the google sheets DigitTally tracker we gave you a few weeks ago.
This is a very useful process, and it can be fun! It can also be fairly surprising/disturbing... But it's better to know than to be stuck in vagueness.
You don't need to do it perfectly, in fact, you don't even need to do it well. Just try it, try doing it badly, and see how it feels. You can try again to do it slightly better next month. Once you get the hang of it, it will get easier and more fun each time you do it, believe it or not. At least, that has been my experience.
Let me know how it goes for you in the comments? And as always, thanks for reading this!
Quick Links:
What is Money? is HERE
What is Investing? is HERE
What is The MGB Investing Starter Kit? is HERE
Sign up for The MGB Investing Starter Kit waitlist HERE
And sign up for the next MGB Investing Starter Kit Workshop by clicking HERE
Comments