Expense Tracking

In my opinion, one of the most fundamental things to do in the area of finance is MYOB (Minding your own business). In order to do this, one would definitely have to do expense tracking. This is needed so that one can know how much is spent every month and how much is saved every month.

I have been doing this religiously every day and it helps a lot when I know where my money goes. Armed with this knowledge, I can then act to reduce or increase the amount spent/earned based on the categories that I have defined. You can do this tracking for free by using google documents, openoffice or downloading a free app into your hand-phone. I prefer doing this via google documents, so that I can access it as long as I have an internet connection.

Some of the columns that I have been using are as follows: (You can customize this to your own liking)

• Year
• Month
• Day
• Type (Example: Meals, Transport, Income)
• Category (Example: Lunch, MRT Top Up, Salary)
• Description (Example: Chicken Rice)
• Amount

How do you do your expense tracking?