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So we’re all about to get into the thick of tax season, right? If that’s not tough enough on a body by itself, it normally also gets us thinking about ways we can be trimming the excess in our budgets, especially if you’re like my family and actually have to pay the government AGAIN.
Ok, nope, this is NOT a rant about the IRS, though you can probably find one of those on HotCouponWorld.com’s Hot Under The Collar section. THIS article is about keeping track of where you spend your hard earned dollars so that you don’t end up at the end of month wondering where in the world all your dollars went. Before you can cut your expenses, you need to know exactly how you spend your money.
Whether you are tech-savvy or not, here are a couple of methods for keeping track of your daily expenditures.
First, there is the time-tested method of keeping your receipts. Easy enough to do, but at the end of the month, it requires that you add everything up to see where everything went. If you go with this method, then you need to have a place to put your receipts that will keep them out of the way in your home and you need a filing system to organize your receipts.
If you are using this method, you need to pick up an envelope-type coupon organizer at the dollar store. You can carry that around with you and immediately file your receipt away as soon as you get it. Then once a week or more often if you are so inclined, enter your receipts into your books at home. Programs like Quicken will help you out a bunch. Once a month or so, go through the organizer and make sure you have all receipts entered, then empty the organizer. Find yourself a shoebox and file them away-just make sure you do keep them somewhere for tax (and REBATE!) purposes. Your task will look much less daunting if you only have a few days or a couple of weeks’ worth of receipts than if you have 3 months’ worth.
The Neat Company has a really cool tool called NeatReceipts. Check it out at www.neatreceipts.com. NeatReceipts is a mobile scanner that inputs your receipts. It categorizes your expenses. It keeps digital copies of your receipts for tax time too. This program has a tool that will extract information directly into Quicken, TurboTax, Excel, or QuickBooks. Talk about doing all the work for you! You can save 50% on a Neat Receipt scanner at Amazon for just $124.99 - a savings of $75 over the regular price of $199.
If you don’t have the money to spend on Quicken or something similar, search for free budgeting tools. There are plenty of offline downloads to help you keep track of your expenditures. The downside to some of these programs is that they require you to have the discipline to sit down periodically and enter your receipts or transactions and categorize them yourself, which I am not able to do. I get tired of all the receipts around my house and throw them all in a box, lock, stock and barrel. However, if you can keep up with all of that, these programs can and will work for you.
If you don’t want to deal with each individual receipt and you just need an overview of your budget and how you spend your money, check out www.mint.com. Mint is a neat little program that hooks to your bank account and automatically categorizes your spending from the moment the money leaves your bank account. You can find discussion about mint.com on the Hot Finance Discussion section of HotCouponWorld.
Mint takes a comprehensive look at all of your bank accounts and if you wish, credit card accounts. Year to date info is available at the click of a mouse, and the program shows you your spending trends as well. Using my custom budget that I created on Mint, I can tell at any time how much of my grocery/clothing/fuel/entertainment money I’ve spent. Oh, and if you have a dangerously low balance, Mint emails you to let you know.
All you need to get started is one of your checks, a credit card statement, and statements from any other accounts that you might want to incorporate.
You don’t have to worry about hacking on this website either, or selling your information to other companies. The information you give them is encrypted, and they specifically state that they do not share your information with outside companies. I’ve been a member of Mint for months, and I haven’t gotten any junk mail or spam from them at all.
And, I can tell you that I spend WAY too much on joe.
I haven’t bought toilet paper in two years. I haven’t bought dryer sheets or floor cleaners in five years. It’s not that we don’t use these products, it’s just that once they were on sale at a price I couldn’t afford to pass up, I bought so many that I haven’t had to think about buying them since.
Since the economy began heading south year, the shopping advice from local and national media has been “try not to buy more than you need at one time” which makes me cringe every time I hear it.
While it may seem counter-intuitive to shop for something you don’t need and buy a boatload of it, if you’re buying an item at its rock bottom price and you can stock up on it, then you won’t have to buy it later at full price.
The key to this strategy? Add one or two sale items a week that weren’t on your list that you’ll likely use anyway. Use coupons to sweeten the deal and buy as many as you can at that price. Today at Target, 150-sheet lined notebook paper was on clearance for .12 cents each. Needless to say, at a savings of 88% off full retail, I bought enough paper for the kids that I won’t I won’t need to buy it again for several years. I’ll toss it in a Rubbermaid tub and pull it out when we need it.
As you begin to shop this way, keep a few things in mind:
If you can incorporate this tactic into your personal shopping routine, you might spend a little more at first, but ultimately, it will reduce your groceries costs more each month. A few years of shopping this way, I’ve cut our grocery bill down to about $200 a month. My family could live off the products stored in the garage for several months if we ever came on tough times. And best of all, I can take the money we save and use it somewhere else.
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