10 Expense Tracking

This is the first part of a 3-part blog on personal finance. 

Since my childhood, I have seen my father keeping track of the expenses in a diary.  He will diligently note down all the expenses of the household and then check the balance cash to see if it is tallying.  Until it gets tallied, there used to be an awkward atmosphere in the house where everyone used to scratch their head to find where money was spent!!  Each year he used a different dairy.  Last year only I destroyed some 20-25 diaries that he had kept over the years!!

In this blog I will tell you a simple way of tracking your expenses. This will take not more than 5 minutes in the evening, each day.  Alternatively you can jot your expenses in a piece of paper and then enter it in the computer, on a weekend, for tracking.  I track my family’s expenses this way.  The method is the same used by my father, but now with technology, we can speed up the process and we can save on the paper too!!

I have created a simple excel sheet template for tracking the expenses.  Those of you, who are interested, can ping me and I can send the blank template to you.  There are different tabs for different months and for next year, you just simply copy the file and rename it after erasing the data.

You just type out the expenses in the sheet like you normally do in a diary or whatever way you are tracking.  All the necessary formulae have been built into the sheet to total them up and show you the balance.  All the tabs are also linked so that you don’t have to worry about carry forwarding the balance of the month as next month’s opening.  If there are more entries for a day, just add more rows for that day and you are done! 

The only thing, other than typing out the expense, is to calculate the physical cash with you and input it in the relevant place in the sheet.  Once you do this, the sheet will inform you if there is any amount missing or it is in excess!!

I am displaying a snapshot from my expense tracking sheet below.  It is a pretty rudimentary way but this does the job for me.  All the figures and data shown in the snapshot are imaginary and I am not responsible for your thoughts JJ

This sheet shows the January 2016 expenses.  Note the different months in separate tabs at the bottom.  The right side of the sheet displays the denomination of different currencies.  This sheet is last year’s, when the Rs 1000 note was still around!! The Bank entry on cell H2 signifies Rs 35,000 withdrawn from the bank. Balance is the carry-over from 31 Dec 2015 

Happy expense tracking!! Cheers!!

PS – Next blog, I will show you how to tally and take care of your bank accounts!!

Today’s daffy definition

Optimist – A person who is as bald as a billiards ball but buys hair restorers that gives a comb with every bottle!!