Okay, so you've gone through all the steps analyzed all the data, and you have yourself a working budget. That's it right? Nope. This is where you lose a lot of people. In successfully using a budget, you have to do more than just simply put income and expenses to paper, you have to maintain that data. A huge part of budgeting, or rather, the most important part of budgeting is keeping track of your expenses, as in keeping a running tally of every dollar you spent.
In these next sections, we will talk about a few options, you have to keep track of these expenses. First up, we'll talk about what I call the old school option, using a spreadsheet, or pen and paper. For those that use a checkbook on a regular basis. This won't be a difficult concept, you simply write down every dollar you spend on a daily basis and a designated chart for those that like pen and paper. This is an ideal option. You can keep track of each transaction in a journal, or a planner that you carry around in your purse, or in a small little black book.
For those that don't carry around a purse in his pockets, you can make this as simple or as complicated as you'd like. You can start with listing your categories, and every time you spend money, place that expense under that specific category, and subtract it from the total previously allocated for that category. So an example, you have a $550 budget for groceries, you go to the grocery store, and spend $135 on a week's worth of consumables. Remember, when I said groceries, I'm referring to all the things you can use and replace. So you pull out that notebook journal or planner and go to the grocery section and subtract $135 from the $550. Be sure to write In your remaining balance, you don't have to do this on paper.
You can use an Excel sheet on your computer as well. You can follow the same idea as you would on paper. Or you can make it complicated by adding formulas and creating charts. There is no wrong way as long as you're tracking the data and reflecting the expense in the correct category.