I try to keep track of my money, and make sure that income equals or exceeds spending. I know that sounds like a basic adulting skill, but I have to tell you, the way my brain works, if I don’t track these things regularly and in as much detail as possible, I quickly get underwater and in dire trouble. There are surely as many ways of managing money as there are people on the planet. But I have to make, update, and adjust a list that shows what I’ve got now, what bills are upcoming and what income I can plan on, and a rolling prediction of how much money I’ll have left over.
Right now I keep a Google spreadsheet. It has one tab per calendar year, with seven columns, left to right: Date (of transaction); Income; Due; Current; Payee; Paid; and Notes. Every month I paste in that month’s bills and expected income; and I drag down the formula that takes the balance, adds the income for that date, subtracts the bill for that date, and shows what I have left over for that date.
I’ve tried other budgeting software. To me, most of them are focused on the past and the current. They don’t let me look foward. So I developed this approach. I was actually re-creating a web app known as Quicken Online. In 2007, it was great because it could pull in bank information so the users didn’t have to manually enter everything. We could add in ongoing and future payments. I loved it. Then it merged with Mint.com (not the current cell phone company, a budgeting web app) and all the features I loved went away. It was a sad day.
Having a web app was great because I could log in anywhere that had an internet connection and see the same data. You think that’s boring, but it was not a standard feature in 2006, let me tell you. And when I got an iPhone in 2007, I could carry that information around in my pocket. Transformative, for me, at least. So that’s why I love my Google spreadsheet; it’s available whereever I have an internet connection, which is 98% of my life.
Prior to that, I used a system that I had learned from a book that I read in the mid-1990s, “How to Get Out Of Debt, Stay Out Of Debt, and Live Prosperously“, a ponderous title for a self-help book. The author, Jerrold Mundis, basically applied the 12-step program to money and debt. I didn’t care for the philosophical elements but the practical elements of tracking spending worked very well for me, as long as I stuck with it. My master list of monthly expenses were kept in a notebook, and I carried a smaller notebook with me where I wrote down everything I bought, and then at the end of every day I added it all up. I began keeping receipts, shoving them in my wallet for later accounting. And I liked knowing what I had left, even if it was going to be negative.
That’s an important point: I track my spending even when I know it’s going to result in a negative balance. Sure, sometimes I get anxiety and feel like I don’t want to know. That urge to ignore it was stronger in the past than it is now. I view it as what it is: a number without any inherent meaning beyond a cash balance. It doesn’t define me as a person. It’s a resource that sometimes I have more or less of. I don’t always find it easy to do the addition and subtraction necessary to get that number, but I do it, and I do it often enough that I can use it to adjust things.
Or to ask for help if I need it. Learning that was also a hard lesson but it is habit now. My friends and family want to help if they can. Hey, maybe I did learn the philosophical parts of that book, after all?