Keep Track of your Expenses

Disclosure: I am NOT certified by the SEC to give financial advices. However, I do have a Bachelors in BA that I obtained in the United States. As of the moment, take this blog entry as an opinion based on personal experience.

It is 2016! What a wonderful year! Yay!!! Anyways, back to the real world. So, one of the things that the majority of people struggle in January is the lack of money. Probably due to excessive spending during the holidays, however the majority of time is due to a lack of control of where the money goes. Do you have to keep a track of your money? Or you just need to save money and stop worrying about expenses. In this blog I will explore this situation.

Long story short: You must track where your money goes, always. When you are young and you start earning money, it will seem easy to spend money on clothing and footwear because we all like nice things. Nevertheless, if you don't learn to save your money while you are young, you might struggle in the future. Starting this year, I made a chart in Excel using my iPad. Yes, I am aware that there are Financial Apps, however it feel so much better to have control of the chart. Besides that, since the file is on the cloud, I can update it even if I don't have the iPad with me.

Back on topic, the reason I made this chart is for see how much I save in a year, and to see in which areas I can reduce spending. If I start the year the same way I started last year, I will wind up complaining about lack of money or without backup money for emergencies. Same as me, you should start tracking your money, so that you can find the specific areas in which you can reduce spending. As you might see in the chart, there's a "Beverages" field, and I made that to keep track of how much I drink with my friends and if by doing that affects my economy and thus my future. I also added the phone bill, cable bill and also a small loan I made back in December. Below the "Earnings" and "Expenses" charts, I made a "Savings" chart, which will serve to keep track of how much money I put away every month.

Then again, what is the purpose of this? I live with my parents, I have an stable job and no kids. I made this because I am planning to live by myself by May in the house I purchased more than a year ago. Without financial statistics, I won't be able to predict whether I can live by myself or not. I am finally listening to my father (who is an accountant).

I know that tracking money is not very popular in my country. Most of the people live by some bad financial lifestyle called "Coyol quebrado, Coyol comido". It doesn't have to be like that, and you don't have to live like that. I know the majority of my friends come from a good family with good financial background. What I don't know is if they keep track of where the money goes, which is extremely important if you are thinking about your future.