We are jumping right into the second installment of the Mini Financial Binder with the Daily Spending Log! This is going to be one of those printables that you will either love 💖 or not 😱! Recording the daily spending will take a lot of honesty and a bit of humility. I’m not proud of the fact that I spent more than $60 per month on grande-too-much-money-and-calorie coffee drinks! Embarrassing! Put it out there and be honest with yourself. You might be surprised on exactly what you spend money on each day.
💲 How to Use
This is a great log to track EVERY LAST PENNY you spend everyday to track where money leaves your bank account! Trust me, it all adds up quickly and goes fast. This daily tracking tool is meant to help you recognize where you spend the money and where you can easily cut back. This is the one for you when you are serious about changing old habits into new ones.
If you need a bit of incentive on how just a little change in spending can add up, check out the Penny Challenge. This post shows how cutting back on one or two little things each week will result in huge savings.
Start by printing out the Log and keeping it with you at all times. I printed it out and folded it into fourths and kept a pen with it. I was able to log my spending on it constantly. The Log will also need to capture all the payments and movement of money that you make via Zelle, Apple Pay or other non-cash transactions. Again, we are being HARD CORE honest here and it is so easy to forget about these if you aren’t recording them right away.
📎 What Do After I Logged Everything In
I’m guessing you wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t want to tackle your personal finances and meet a budget goal. Recording expenses is time-consuming, inconvenient and – frankly – not a lot of fun! But, once you have kept track for a couple weeks, you’ll identify trends and patterns that you can act on.
One of the funny things that happens is how the mere act of writing down the expenses will change behavior. As I mentioned above, my Starbucks runs became tough when I had to write down how much I actually spent on those drinks. I didn’t need to wait two weeks before I realized that I was spending a lot more than I should have.
The other immediate change that resulted from recording expenses was realizing exactly how much I spent eating out for dinner. Both my husband and I work, and we frequently don’t have the energy to cook at night. Writing down the restaurant expenses quickly became eye-opening! Yikes! We decided that we should spend a bit more effort on the weekends to prepare slow cooker freezer meals. That saved us a lot of money!
Record your daily expenses for 7-14 days, sit down, and analyze where you are spending your money. Any surprises? Drop a note below and let me know.
Are there other areas in your budget that can be tweaked? Keep tackling them one at a time. It takes time for these spending changes to become a habit.
FUN FACT! Habits take 30+ days to form so don’t do this for two days and expect perfection. Give yourself a full month of working on it and then KEEP WORKING ON IT. This doesn’t stop.
📒 What Is Included In The Mini Financial Binder
The binder includes the following free printable sheets:
- Binder Cover Sheet
- Expense Tracker
- Daily Spending Log (this one)
- Printable Bill Worksheet
- Debt Payoff Log Tracker
- Monthly Bill Worksheet
- $1000 Emergency Fund Savings Challenge
- Yearly Financial Goals (newsletter sign up here)
- Monthly Financial Goals (newsletter sign up here)
Yesterday’s post was the Expense Tracker and Binder Cover Sheet. In the next couple of posts, we will cover the Debt Payoff Tracker and Monthly Bill Worksheet. All of these do different jobs and we can show you how they will fit perfectly into your new Financials Binder!
🖥️ Are you looking for other awesome tools to save money? Check these out!
52 Week Challenge – This is a FUN financial challenge that we had our son play with us. It taught him the power of saving. Take a look and see if you can guess why this is life changing!
Penny Challenge – Ready to start saving small to get a REALLY big bang for your buck? This is the one to jump on NOW! I will show you how fast pennies add up to make a big impact in your finances!
Money Envelope Template The Cash Envelope System is extremely effective. Use this free printable to make your own cute envelopes and stash your money inside. Yes, this feels old school, but it works!
Grocery Comparison Sheet – This is a great tool to track the costs at different grocery stores. The findings might surprise you. Take a couple hours, stick this in your purse and let me know what you find.
20 Free Budget Printables – This is a great list of printables to print off to help you kickstart your best financial year ahead.
No Spend Challenge -This great tool allows you and your family to have a money crunch for 30 days to see how much you can save. You are going to give up many things like dinners out, movies, extra groceries and more but the big payoff comes at the end of 30 days to see how much you were able to save!!
You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don’t have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn’t mean they apply to you. ― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave