Who doesn’t have a goal for the new year that involves money? Many of us have goals that involve making more money or managing the money we already have — but, no matter exactly what goal you might have for your money, you’ll probably need some baseline information about it. While understanding your expenses is basic, they make up some of the most important information you can gather about where your money goes. Tracking expenses can be a relatively simple matter and can provide you so much information about your spending habits.
Whether you’re working on creating a budget or you are trying to simplify the bookkeeping for a small business, tracking your expenses should be a first step. If most of your spending is done electronically (using a debit card or a credit card), you may be able to get away with just tracking your cash spending. Most money management software can automatically import those electronic expenses, further simplifying matters. You can also choose to use your own system, from the ground up, including setting up a spreadsheet and entering information by hand.
Getting In The Habit of Tracking
When it comes to tracking expenses, you can make your system as simple as collecting receipts and organizing them once a month. You might get a little more information from other expense tracking systems (listing them in a spreadsheet, using money management software or even choosing an online application), but all methods have one thing in common: you have to get in the habit of thinking about your expenses. It’s very easy to misplace a receipt or forget about any cash you spent. You may even think that a cup of coffee or a trip to the vending machine isn’t worth tracking — although those little expenses can add up amazingly fast. There are all sorts of opportunities to throw a kink into your plan to track expenses. You have to get in the habit of doing so, to reduce those lapses, and make sure that the data you’re basing financial decisions on is solid.
It’s also worthwhile to track your income in the same system that you track your expenses. This may seem like a no-brainer, because many people think that they only have one source of income: the salary that they receive from their job. In truth, however, most of us have additional sources of money, whether we hold a yearly garage sale, freelance or receive rebates. If you choose an application specifically created to track expenses, you’ll find that most have some sort of tool for inputting information about your income as well. If you decide to use a system of your own devising, such as a list of expenses in a spreadsheet, you’ll need to clearly separate income and expenses — place them in different columns, make one negative or denote the difference in another way.
Using Your Information
Once you’ve built up a lot of information about your expenses, you can use it to make a number of different financial decisions. You can easily broadcast your future spending — and plan out a budget. If you aren’t comfortable with the amount of spending you’re doing, you can also use all those expenses you’ve been tracking to help you set limits and finding places where you can reduce your spending. If, for instance, you notice a lot of lunches out, you could cut those expenses by committing to brown-bagging on a more regular basis. As long as you already have information on your expenses in hand, you can use it to make a long list of decisions much easier.
A Few Online Options
While you could use a notebook or a spreadsheet to track your expenses, there are more than a few tools online that are able to handle all the details — and may have a few additional features thrown in:
- Xpenser: If you’re always on the go, Xpenser can be a good option. It allows you to text your expenses in, helping you ensure that you don’t forget to track your spending between the store and home. In addition to SMS, you can email, Twitter, IM, call or manually add your expenses.
- Moneytrackin’: For tracking expenses in multiple accounts — such as business and personal — Moneytrackin’ provides easy management of expenses between those accounts. You can also tag transactions and budget easily.
- Mint: While Mint only tracks your expenses made through a bank account (checks, debit cards, credit cards), it does integrate expense tracking with a whole host of other features, including tools to help you analyze your spending and automatic expense categorization.
- Buxfer: Another site that primarily tracks expenses made through bank accounts, Buxfer also has tools to help organize shared expenses — such as splitting the rent with a roommate.
- Shoeboxed: You can add expenses by hand to Shoeboxed, but the site’s real value is that (for a price) they’ll scan in your receipts and upload them to your account on the site. If you do a lot of spending with cash, this site can truly simplify matters.
No matter which option you decide to go with, I do think it’s worthwhile to pick a system that is as automatic as possible — writing down everything by hand and entering it into some sort of money management program just seems like a fast way to use up a lot of time. If you use another tool besides those listed above and really like it, please share it in the comments.
Thursday Bram is a freelance journalist of over five years experience. She studied Communications at the University of Tulsa and is currently working on her MA in Communication Design. Her work has focused primarily on entrepreneurial topics. More information about Thursday is available at thursdaybram.com.
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开支跟踪介绍
新的一年，谁的目标中是跟钱没关系的呢？我们当中许多人的目标是赚更多的钱或是更好的理财。但是，不管你对钱的目标制定如何详细，你都可能需要一些与之有关的基本信息。了解你的开支是基本的同时，这也是你能搜集到的钱流向何处的重要信息部分。开支跟踪相对来说是简单的，并且能提供给你很多你在消费习惯上的资料。
不管你现在的消费习惯是先进行预算还是你想把他当做一个小生意一样而试着简化记账，第一步骤都应是跟踪开支。倘若你的大部分开销是非现金消费（刷借记卡或者信用卡），那么侥幸的，也许你只要跟踪现金消费就可以了。大多的理财软件会自动输入刷卡消费数据，这让记账更加简单化。你也可以从头到尾选择用你自己一套方法，从建立电子数据表到手动输入消费数据。
养成记账习惯
说到记账，你可以用很简单的方法，即收好每次的购物小票并每月整理一次。你可以从其他开支跟踪系统中得到更多的方法（在电子数据表中列出来；用理财软件或者在线工具），不过所有的方法都有一个共同点：你得养成回想开支情况的习惯。忘记把小票放在哪儿或者忘记一些钱花在哪儿了是很经常发生的。你甚至会认为一杯咖啡的钱或者在自动贩卖机用的钱用不着记下来——尽管这些小钱可能在很短时间内加起来就会出奇的多。各种各样的理由会让你停止记账计划，你得养成这样的习惯，减少失信于自己的次数，确保你用来做理财计划基础的数据是可靠的。
同样有意义的是，像记你的开支一样，把你的收入也记下。这看起来似乎是没有大脑的人做的事，因为许多人觉得他们只有一个收入来源，即工资所得。然而事实上，我们大多数人有着额外的收入，不管是每年的旧货出售，兼职或是退税。若你用跟踪开支的专用工具，你会发现它们大多也有着记录收入数据的工具。若你要用你自己的方法，如电子数据表中的清单，你需要把收入和开支分别清晰地列出----把它们分栏，其中一边用负数或用其他符号标出。
利用你的账本
当有了很多关于自己的消费信息时，你就可以利用它们做很多不同的理财决策了。你能很容易地宣布自己今后的开支计划，并为预算做出准备。如果你对目前的消费习惯不满意，你可以利用这些资料帮助自己限定开支，并帮自己发现可以削减哪些部分的消费。假如，比方说你发现自己很多的午饭都是在外面吃的，那么你可以通过定期地自带午餐来减少这个开销。只要你手中有开支的信息，你就可以利用他们来提前做出一大串决定了。
一些在线工具
当笔记本或者电子数据表可以用来跟踪开支的同时，网上也有很多的工具能处理好所有的跟踪细节，而且还可能还会有一些免费添加的工具：
- Xpenser:如果你是个大忙人，Xpenser软件是一个好帮手。你可以把开支数据全文输进去，确保你不会落掉在商店和在家里的开支记录。除了发送手机短信，你也可以通过邮箱，Twitter网站，即时聊天工具，电话或者手动的方式添加开支数据。
- Moneytrackin’:这是一款多账户开支跟踪软件，例如商务开支和个人开支。Moneytrackin' 提供了对这些账户的简便管理。 你也可以轻松地对交易或者预算添加标签。
- Mint:它只跟踪用户通过银行账户消费（支票，借记卡，信用卡）的开支情况的同时，它还有着许多其他特色，如它有帮助你分析数据的工具，以及自动消费归类工具。
- Buxfer:跟踪银行账户消费的另一个网站。 同时它也有工具帮助管理共用开支，如突然和室友一起拼凑房租。
- Shoeboxed:你可以手动输入数据到shoeboxed，但是这个网站的真正价值是能对你的购物小票进行扫描并上传到网上的账户中。如果你大多是现金消费，这个网站就会让你倍感轻松。
不管你打算选择哪个，我认为选一个尽可能自动化的会比较好——用手记下所有的数据并把它们输入所谓的理财软件很能消耗时间。如果除此之外你有其他工具并且喜欢用的，请在下面的评论中和我们分享。
瑟斯达.布拉姆是工作5年的自由记者。她在塔尔赛大学学习通信学，目前正在攻读通信设计的MA学位。她的工作主要聚焦于与企业有关的主题。关于瑟斯达的更多资料请浏览thursdaybram.com.
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