Keep Track Of Your Budget

Keeping track of your personal budget can be difficult at first. It requires not only good organization with your receipts, but also the dedication necessary for maintaining a strict record of all your transactions. It is very easy to forget just how much little things can add up, and at the end of the month or week, you will be shocked by how little is left. Small scale, practical solutions are the easiest way to start.

Before you do anything else, leave your plastic at home. Put them in envelopes and don’t worry about them for a week. Once a week, take your simplest bank card to your bank, and withdraw hard cash money. Then use this hard cash money on as much as you can. Watching that green go down on the counter hurts a lot worse than just sliding your card.

Add up the little things you did spend cash on when the first week is over. If you don’t want to eliminate anything, don’t. This isn’t about saving, it’s about budgeting. It’s not about not spending money, it’s about knowing what you spend. You can have as many small purchases you want each week.

Throw in a handful of other charges, such as using a debit card pretty much anywhere, or using an ATM that doesn’t belong to your bank. These have their own little charges, and your bank may not be very happy with you giving even a few cents to their competition and help themselves to as much as two whole dollars. This is all outlined in the very center of a six-page boiler plate document with microscopic text.

And then, of course, service charges are a big one. No matter how tiny, they are never your friends. It can be about forty-five cents to use a card at the gas station. That may not be very much, but it can come out to almost two dollars a month, which is over twenty-one dollars a year.

At the end of the first week with no cards, add up the little things you spent cash on. If you don’t want to eliminate anything, don’t. It’s not so much about not spending money, as it is about knowing what you spend. You can have as many little purchases that you want into the week. Just make sure you know you’re going to make them. Soon you’ll find yourself not making a lot of them in order to fit in something else. You’ll soon have it down to a science which little things you want each week.

Check Cards are also a way they sneak up on you. Their little logos make it seem like it’s a “credit card” transaction, but the money is just vanishing from your account. But you already knew that. Therefore, you also already know that once in a while these cards are transacted as debit cards. If you can swipe it, great. Bypass the service charge by choosing credit. Sometimes the clerk won’t ask, and sometimes the transaction can only be done as debit. Make sure you know what’s going on with your Check Card.

If you’re in control of your personal budget each week, your personal finances will make a lot more sense. Something as simple as leaving your cards at home can save a lot, and keeping track of your little transactions and making good use of them can work wonders as well.

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