Keeping Track of Money

At the very beginning of the year, I had decided that I wanted to record how much money I spend in 2014. A couple of my friends did it for 2013, and it sounded interesting to me! Physically seeing how much money they spent throughout the whole year actually helped them to start saving their money, which I felt is something that I need to start doing because I'm always buying myself new clothes.

Being the lover of office supplies and organization that I am, I came up with a way that was easy and efficient for me to keep track of how much money I spend.

I use a small notebook and a divider. I got the notebook from Her Campus's National Pre-Collegiette Conference, and I got the divider from the $1 section in Target. The divider is organized by month, starting with January. Each time I get a receipt from a purchase, I put it in chronological order in the divider. I also write down each transaction in the notebook in case I might lose the receipt and to make it easier to look at.

I have each month labeled and highlighted. For each line, I have the date, how much I spent that day, and where I spent it. At the end of each month, I have a total for how much I spent that much. I included the store with each transaction because I felt that it would be cool to see how much I spent from each place at the end of the year! Especially with Lilly... sorry not sorry.

I still have about five more months left of purchases for the year, and I've already spent a ridiculous amount of money each month... it's crazy! I had no idea I actually spent that much money, or even had that much money to spend, each month. I can't wait to see how much money I spent the whole year!

Do you keep track of how much money you spend?