Tracking Spending

I’ll admit it – I’m feeling a bit discombobulated with my cash finances these days.

It all comes down to the difficulty of tracking my finances these days. Back when I moved to DC in 2004 and was working on paying off some credit card debt I started tracking all of my expenses. It wasn’t an exact science but I basically added up my receipts a couple of times a month.

While this system took some effort on my part (a half hour a month to deal with), it helped me a lot. The thing is, I didn’t really realize how helpful this was until I fell out of habit.

Here in Kabul everything is done on a cash basis. In addition to this, receipts in general are few and far between. Both of these factors obviously make it harder to track my expenses.

In the beginning I thought – that’s ok I’ll just keep track of when I take out money and that will be good enough. That might work for some people, but after having tracked my expenses for so long, it is hard for me not to be able to wrap my head around what my money is going towards.

The other issue is that I’ve been trying to scrimp and not have a great deal of cash available. This means repeated trips to the ATM and makes it harder to know how much is spent in a month.

Thus – I have two resolutions to put myself back on track.

Taking out a set amount of money each month. This feels like a no-brainer. The added benefit is that my work has a system where we can get money deducted from our salary and issued to us in cash here at our office; eliminating a need to go to the ATM on a regular basis. I’m thinking that $350 a month should give me enough with the possibility of some left over funds at the end of the month. I can always challenge myself to save extra by using any excess for R&R spending money. I can also reduce it by a bit if it seems too much over time.

Going old school – mini-notebook. I’m also thinking that having a better knowledge of where my money goes to could be done by taking a quick note when I spend money. Kind of like the ancient days of a checkbook registry. I know this will take a bit of effort but I think it will make me feel better about my financial situation.

Readers: I’d love to here what works for you in terms of tracking money!

Cheers,

Miel