Part of my journey, in the 4ish years we have been “attempting” to pay off debt, we have been using Mint.com. I loved it. What I do not love is I just automatically had it assigning my categories to transactions. I never really paid too much attention to whether I was hitting my budget or not. I never really made sure that I was not spending more than was coming in. I mean, if there’s money in my account, I can spend it, right?
WRONG! This year I decided I needed to go through a VERY time consuming process. I decided to completely redo everything as far as my budget goes. I have two ways I track things.
- I am tracking the amount of money going into my account and out of my account each day, to make sure that I have enough to pay my bills every week. This Google Sheet tells me if there is enough money in my account to cover my bills for the week. I highlight in yellow the transactions that have not shown up on my account yet.
- I am using EveryDollar.com which keeps track of my spending for the month and tells me if there was an overage that can go towards my goals at the moment (right now the $1,000 Baby Emergency Fund).
- I am not using the paid version because I need the activity of having to look at every transaction, see how much was spent, and log it into the correct category, I log on here after the transaction has cleared my account.
- I keep all of my recurring bills on a Google Calendar, I have a special calendar for bills, I chose the color red because red says “money being paid to someone else” to me.
What are some ways you use to keep you on track? What are the best strategies you have found?
