A fool and his money are soon partying.

November 22, 2006 8:52 AM

Tracking expenses for the first time. Also, how the hell do [insert random opensource financial software] work?

This month I suddenly realized that I had no money left, at all after just 3 weeks. I had to borrow money from my parents for my own expenses, besides the university ones. While I had some extra spending done, it wasn't outrageous at all and shouldn't have screwed up my financial balance so badly.

So, this month I want to track every expense (and income) to become aware how my money disappears through the month.
I've been doing it (for the past 2 days) by registering them on my daily planner. However, I would like a digital counterpart for my desktop.

I tried jgnash but I got completely lost after being unable to make the amounts match, for some reason there were negative amounts where there shouldn't be, among other things that I assume are product of my lack of experience with this kind of software.

So, any advice with the tracking? And recommendations (and explanations for their use) for related software are very welcome.

(I saw some of the other related threads but most are about budgeting, something that I would do... after knowing how much money I receive during the month and how much I spend. PearBudget was discarded because of this, as I tend to take no special notice of what I do, I just spend in what is needed.)

posted by Memo to work & money (14 comments total)

First of all, congratulations for making this decision so early in life. I wish I'd done so. Tracking your finances is key to keeping them under control.

Do you have access to a spreadsheet? For what you're doing, a spreadsheet would work perfectly, believe it or not. It's not a long-term solution, of course, but for one month, it'll provide just what you need.

Are you tracking just cash expenses? Or are you tracking bank accounts? Wesabe is a free web-based tool that just went public and may (or may not) fit your needs. It's worth checking out. You may also want to check out these:

Moneydance
Pennyminder
ClearCheckbook

I haven't used any of them, but I've had them recommended by people in the past.
posted by jdroth at 9:31 AM on November 22, 2006

Mathowie just wrote about Wesabe on his blog and it sounded pretty excellent so I tried it out. So far I can say it was really easy to upload my bank statement and start tagging my expenses. I've used Quicken for years, but this just seemed simple enough for what I need (tracking what I spend and what I deposit).
posted by jdl at 9:42 AM on November 22, 2006

The envelope method is cool. It doesn't use computers, but I almost prefer it over various other methods. I use excel to make up a rough budget for the month (it gets more accurate after a few months of doing it, but you need this step even if it turns out to be wrong).

So after making a rough budget with known and expected expenses (use every dollar you will have in the budget, even if it's just a 'misc' category), you need to get some envelopes.

Each category gets an envelope. Put the amount you budgeted in it, and spend for that thing only out of that envelope. This might work better if the budget time period is per paycheck instead of per month. So when you get a paycheck, you set aside the necessary for rent and savings and whatnot, and then you put the rest in several 'misc' type envelopes.

You could have an 'eating out' envelope. You don't have to keep track of spending so much as having to keep track of how much you have left, and make decisions based on that. If a friend wants to go out, you can easily see how much you have and how long you need to make it last (till the next paycheck). If you find a certain category going away faster than you want, keep track of the spending right on the envelope. You can enter it into excel or similar later if you want to do reporting or graphing on it, but really all you need is where and how much you spent money.

Good luck managing your money, this is something I'm working on myself.
posted by cschneid at 9:53 AM on November 22, 2006 [1 favorite]

No bank accounts to track, however I'll probably open one for savings. I haven't decided yet.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.
posted by Memo at 9:54 AM on November 22, 2006

I've used an excel spreadsheet for this and it works well for tracking.

There are some straightforward templates you can get directly from MS.

In my experience, they also work in Open Office, if you want to go open-source.
posted by Merlyn at 9:54 AM on November 22, 2006

Just use your own Excel spreadsheet and customize it however you want.

I have been doing this for months now, and even though it's a pain in the ass to remember every single little thing, I find that eventually it's very worthwhile.

To help keep track of expenses while I'm not at my computer I just use my phone's SMS Drafts and put them in there for input later.

In Excel I put each new month in its own worksheet. Each worksheet has about 7 or so columns for the things I spend most consistently on, like Food, Entertainment, Phone, Gas, DVD's, along with an Other column.

At the bottom each column has a total (SUM function), and over on the right I do a Grand Total (SUM'ing all the totals at the bottom). This way its easy to see how much you spend on each Category, plus see the running total for the month.

Just create a template, and copy everything including formulae to the other worksheets, and start filling in.
posted by althanis at 10:56 AM on November 22, 2006

I've kept the budget just fine in Notepad. Nothing fancy is especially necessary =D
posted by vanoakenfold at 10:57 AM on November 22, 2006

I'm at college too. I write down anything I spend in a mini diary dedicated to the purpose, or if I don't have that with me, just a scrap of paper that I will keep in my wallet. Then I go home and put the weekly figures into excel, where I have 'expected' figures in italics, so I can see what the difference is. Quick and easy and there's no learning curve.
posted by jacalata at 3:27 PM on November 22, 2006

Like jdroth I wish I'd done this years ago ... now I'm using a free app called QuikBudget on my Palm-OS PDA (an old Sony Clie, fwiw) which means that my accounts travel with me all the time.

QuikBudget works very like the envelopes idea suggested by cschneid, and it's easy to use but not so easy to explain. You tell QB how much to put in each "envelope" at each pay period, and record the spending from each. QB does the math so you always know how much you have in each category. You can also tell QB to put any leftovers into savings.

I recently decided I had too many categories, so simplified to rent, house (groceries, utilities, etc.), car, entertainment, and savings, but QB lets you divide things up in as many categories as you want. When you record a spending you can add detail of what it was for.
posted by anadem at 3:31 PM on November 22, 2006

Okay, I'm trying to make an appropiate spreadsheet in Excel.
However I'm having some problems and I feel like I'm over complicating something should be simple: I want to add a note to each amount detailing exactly what it was.

For example, in one column (transport) I have three amounts, 300, 100 and 300 that were spent during Nov 21. I want to specify somewhere that the 300 were used in taxis and the 100 in a bus, but I can't seem to figure out where to put that information.

The spreadsheet I'm using looks somewhat like this:


_Nov__|_Transport_|Copies|_Income_|
__21__|____300____|__80__|________|
______|____100____|______|__1000__|
______|____300____|______|________|
__22__|___________|__330_|________|
______|___________|______|________|
Total:|___________|______|________|


Thanks again.
posted by Memo at 3:57 PM on November 22, 2006

memo -

Echoing others, good job taking the initiative for this. Too often, people think of a budget (or a listing of expenses) as a limit on the fun things they can buy. Really, it's a limit on the crap that you buy unintentionally, which, having bought it, limits the amount of fun things you can buy. If that makes sense.

Regarding your question from a few minutes ago, there are two options that come to mind. One is that you can have a "meta-category," which would be "transportation," and then you'd have two columns under that, for "taxi" and "bus." At the bottom, you could tally up each individual column, and then have a total of the two, which would be the total for transportation. That might be overcomplicating it a bit. The other option I can think of right now would be to add "comments" on the particular cells (which Excel lets you do). Downside to that is that the info is hidden from you until you mouse over the cell.

One other possibility is that you could use PearBudget for tracking, just not for budgeting. That wouldn't break it or anything. (Just skip "Step 2" in the setup.) Ultimately, though, it's best for you to use whatever you're most comfortable with — and whatever you'll actually use. Good luck with this.
posted by Alt F4 at 4:14 PM on November 22, 2006

I'm confused. Why can't you just have a column (or more) for your description? Aha. I see. You're using column headings for your descriptions. I'd do something like this instead:

DATE DESCRIPTION IN OUT TOTAL
11/21 Trip to Marla's $10 ($10)
11/22 Paycheck $1000 $990
11/23 Nintendo Wii $250 $740

(Ugh. I can't get those to line up.)

You could add a column (or more) for tags like "taxi", "entertainment", "beer", etc.
posted by jdroth at 6:03 PM on November 22, 2006

I have an OCD attitude to my spreadsheets, so mine would have everything for one day on one line, with the 'transport' column getting an entry of '=300+100+300' (displays 700), and then I make notes in the column to the right of everything else, it might say '2 * 300 = taxi, 100 = bus'.

_Nov__|_Transport_|Copies|_Income_|
__21__|____700____|__80__|________| =2*taxi@300, +bus@100

But this depends on how important the information is: I would do that if it's just a reminder so you can see how you spent 700 on transport in a day. If, however, you're trying to cut down on taxi use because you're spending so much on it, or you need to know how much you're spending on taxis because you'll get reimbursed, then make an individual column for it. This also means you'll get an automatic total for your taxi expenses.
posted by jacalata at 4:09 AM on November 23, 2006

Memo, what you're looking for are Comments in Excel. I know exactly why you want them too.

I use comments for each expense so that I can record where it was spent, and to make sure I dont accidentally enter the same expense twice.

For example under my "Entertainment" column, I use comments for whether it was drinks, cover charge, etc.

Right click on the cell you want to insert the comment into, then click Insert Comment. Youll then be able to type out whatever you wish, and this information will be visible only when you hover your cursor over the cell.

Each cell with a Comment in it with have a little red part in the corner indicating that a comment is in the cell.
posted by althanis at 4:26 AM on November 23, 2006