Do you ever find yourself at the end of the week thinking “where did all my money go?” You firmly believed that you still had a couple hundred pesos left, but when you checked your wallet they were nowhere to be found.
If this is a common occurrence for you, you might benefit from some sound financial advice. Read on to learn about a basic tip that will improve your money management and help you start saving.
Track it all down
Have you ever heard the popular adage that “what you cannot measure, you cannot improve?” This idea easily applies to personal finance management.
“Write down all your bills and track (them),” says model and celebrity mama Divine Lee. This is the first step in managing your finances. Without it, budgeting will continue to be a struggle.
Divine Lee says budgeting starts with an awareness of how much money you have and how much you regularly spend. “You know how much is coming in. You know your fixed expenses. And then that’s when you can start budgeting.”
Why is tracking your expenses important? One reason is so that you can see where you can adjust your spending.
You need to have a clear picture of where your money is going, how much you are spending on specific expenses, and how much you have left in order to improve your money management.
If you don’t have specific answers to these categories, how can you expect to improve your personal finances?
You might, for instance, realize that you spend too much on a non-essential item. This becomes an opportunity to modify your spending. Mama Divine says that if you decide to cut back on some items, you can divert the money you save to “better” items such as insurance or investments.
Tracking your spending can be easier when it is done in an organized way. Divine Lee recommends tracking expenses digitally, so that the details are easily stored and retrieved.
If you are more of the paper-and-pen type though, a good journal notebook might be a good idea for your expense tracking. Check out the IFEX 2023 Notebook Planner A5 At Your Own Pace, which features fully-colored monthly pages and ruled weekly pages, as well as vouchers from partner companies.
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