Stay on track

If you’ve read this newsletter for a while, you will know that I tend to harp on tracking expenses. It is the single most important thing you can do to change your financial trajectory. I strongly believe in doing it manually – ditching the apps that do it for you and being as specific as possible. I’ve written several posts about tracking finances (Like here, here, and here and the word “tracking” appears 76 times in my posts, to be exact). The benefits are innumerable.  

For me, tracking our spending has become a mindfulness practice. Tracking my expenses allows me the opportunity to confirm that I am being intentional with my resources (both time and money). I ask: “Am I using my money in the best way possible to serve my values and goals?” It also keeps me accountable to my spending plan. By tracking my expenses, I know that I have stuck to my predetermined budget categories.

When we think about personal finance how we manage money, we may tend to think of it as objective, rote numbers on a page. The reality is that the way you handle your money is likely heavily non-conscious, simply the result of a lifetime of habits, and not quite intentional or objective. Tracking expenses brings these habits to life.

These non-conscious money habits are formed by your beliefs, experiences, scripts, environment, and other factors. Until we can see our habits clearly, we have a difficult time changing them. If your money habits are “bad” (i.e. they aren’t serving you, are taking you away from your goals, causing you strain on your relationship, requiring debt), then by making these habits obvious, you have an opportunity to change them.

Tracking expenses allows your habits to become obvious.

What might you discover? Perhaps you go shopping whenever you are stressed or anxious about an upcoming event. Perhaps you’re getting takeout several nights a week and it’s wreaking havoc on your budget (and health). Perhaps the occasional drink after work is more like, well, nightly, and it’s leaving you feeling a little drained (financially and otherwise). Maybe you discover that you are doing things that are really fulfilling. Until we start seeing what we’re doing and the impact it has on us, it’s hard to do anything different.

I invite you to begin tracking your finances. Start today. Become the an objective anthropologist of your spending. Until making good choices becomes the default, make tracking your spending a daily habit. Set up a time to sit down on your computer and review the day’s spending. It will take not more than 5 minutes. Make the unconscious, conscious, and start changing your lifetime of habits today.