As per title. I decided to keep track of how much I spend and on what I spend, using an MS Excel spreadsheet. I'm not really familiar with how to use the application so I wonder if anybody can help me with the design? How should I divide the spending categories in a meaningful way that isn't too wide, and how should I design the table itself? What I think would be useful: 1) new expenses can be added as they are made 2) new expenses can be tagged with date on which they happened so they can be used with statistic functions and be divided time-wise 3) new expenses can be clearly separated into categories 4) all expenses can be summed, and gathered into graphs and such. So far my idea is something like: Columns for: 1->n categories, n+1 is for the date, n+2->2n+2 sums all expenses of each category up to each date from the very first row (i.e first row is only first row, second row is first+second row) But what I have right now seems very clumsy and unwieldy, so I was hoping for ideas to reorganise this somehow.
There should be templates online that you can choose from ^ ^ If you prefer a more techy way, there are spending tracker apps too.
Double entry accounting. No need to be too detailed, just write it out on 2 sides of a ledger. You'll find that the monthly expenses tend to cluster at the top because that is the first thing you pay every month, then the weekly expenses like food. Miscellaneous items tend to pop up only once in a while between weeks so you don't really need special classifications for them. And use a real book. Book > Spreadsheet when it comes to hands on accounting.
As someone who use excel in accounting, excel is superior. I know some companies that use excel for their whole accounting
I will tell you that I once tried to account for every expense as it happened. I was only using a little pocket notepad back then, though. Anyway, after a year or so, I had to stop. It was making me OCD and was stressing me out. This was especially so if I forgot to make a note of a cash purchase. I'd spend time struggling to remember where I was and what I bought. Of course, even without that trouble, every time I made a purchase, I'd have to stop what I was doing so I could make a note of it before I forget. It was annoying. I later simplified things by just declaring bi-weekly cash-on-hand is $300 from the ATM. That can be used for fast food, snacks, and whatnot. Use the credit card on other things. The monthly credit card bill itemizes what I bought, so you can analyze things from there.