Well, starting a new “topic” on this blog, personal finance related 🙂
Just to be clear from the beginning, I’m not a finance guru, nor am I an expert in this field. Unless otherwise stated, what I will write here is my own experience with how I did this and that and how I think it helped me.
In no way I’m telling you what to do or how to do it.
So, money… My girlfriend said this several times in the past year: “I created a monster!”. But let’s start with the beginning…
I love working with data! Big data, small data, doesn’t matter, give me data 😀 Personally, I think I have an Excel and Access files for almost everything that have “numbers” in my house. Car mileage and gas consumption, home asset management (as in, I know when I bought and how much I paid for every single piece of furniture or appliance I have in my house, including serial numbers), groceries (yes, every single grocery shopping receipt itemized by product, quantity, price, store), salary income, annual savings planner, rent and household expenses, hiking plan (km/day, pace, distance etc) for long trips or tracking climbing 13 floors at me previous office (don’t ask 😀), etc.
Don’t really remember why, but about 8 years ago I encountered this template from Microsoft (it was uglier then but it had the same idea). In their words: “This Excel template can help you track your monthly budget by income and expenses. Input your costs and income, and any difference is calculated automatically so you can avoid shortfalls or make plans for any projected surpluses. Compare projected costs with actual costs to hone your budgeting skills over time.”
Anyway, I started using it but gave up after few months, very few months. Various reasons but mainly lack of time and lack of support from my spouse in getting the expenses/receipts to the “finance” department.
So this happened for some good 5-ish years. I start the template, spend some hours adding the subcategories and then few months later it’s a dead project.
Time passed by and when a divorce added up, I started everything all over (new rent, appliances, furniture etc.) and every single month living paycheck to paycheck wondering where the hell is my money going!? I only bought this, that and something else, oh and that one, and the subscription I forgot about…
But this time was different. I think because I had the psychological help of my girlfriend. She is quite good at saving and this motivated me!
So I started reading books and listening all possible podcasts about personal finances. I remember like it was yesterday – Christmas vacation, 2021. I read 2 books in 1 week. I listened to tens if not hundreds short-like podcasts in the car during the car rides and every single time I went to the 🚽.
I was astonished by the fact that there is an emergency fund, savings fund, investment, kids, car maintenance…. All these “funds” I had no idea about!
3, or better 6, months of expenses in the emergency fund – yeah sure, I have money until the next paycheck…
Car maintenance? Of course, I will pay from my paycheck when the time comes and then I will just suffer spending less until the next paycheck.
Emergencies? To be honest, I don’t remember how I dealt with them 🙄
Anyway, during that same vacation week, I built a new Excel file (yeah, I know) to add my daily expenses. A very simple file with date, expense details, amount, a category and subcategory. With each day/week that passed by, I was improving the file by adding several tables, sheets etc.
Fast forward 1,5 years, I now have an Excel file where I track my income, plan my monthly expenses, add the real expenses and have the yearly overview of how I’m doing.
So why my girlfriend said: “I created a monster!“? Because ever since I started reading about this 1,5 years ago, finance is my main topic of discussion with anyone, especially with my daughters. Every time I mention something finance related to her, I can see her rolling her eyes 🙂
Anyway, trying to close this post, on which I worked for 2 weeks, writing small pieces whenever I had time. Getting down from spending 4000/year on Amazon to 100/year is a big achievement that I’m really proud of!
To anyone who wants to see where their money is going to, just start with tracking your expenses. You’ll be amazed how easily 10-15 euros in-and-there add up to a big chunk.
If you need any help starting up with an Excel file, contact me and I will try my best to help.