Knowing What I Spend

In my previous post, I described how I prepare a budget. As I explained, one of the most difficult part is listing all my expenses.

So how do I know how what my expenses are?

When this frog was much younger, he started at the university. At that time, our frog didn't have much money, so he did something to know where that money went, and to make sure he was not over-spending. He wrote down each and every one of the things he spent money on, down to the cent. Everything. The young frog did that for a year.

As you can imagine, by the time I stopped doing that, I knew perfectly well where my money was going. I'll admit now that it was a bit excessive. There is usually no need to do it for such a long time. Usually a month is enough to get a grip on your expenses.

The point is that by writing down all your expenses as they occur, it is much easier to track them. And once they are written down, it becomes easy to categorize them and see how much each category costs you. You don't need to do it all the time. I did it about 18 years ago. And while I was thinking about write this post, I realized it might be a good time to do it again for a month.

After all, my situation has changed a lot in 18 years. I think I still know where my money goes, but it might be a good thing to check. I'll try to do this in September, once the summer is over.