I’m not that great at saving money.

Sure, I have money in savings but I know I could have a lot more and given the thought of buying property in the not-too-distant future is getting closer and closer to the front of my mind I know I need to start saving properly.

I currently have an excel spreadsheet that lists my outgoings for the month so I can plan if I will save anything or not but it’s only ever luck if I save each month. I don’t keep track of what I’m sending throughout the month and basically just check my bank account the day before I get paid to see how much I have left! Not great! I’m also not great at saving my Etsy profits.. Instead they just go into my account and get spent (on buying planner supplies from other shops usually).

So with all this in mind I decided to finally set up the ‘finances’ section of my Filofax, using printables from Pretty Purple Plans on Etsy.

Budget

First I have my budget sheet for the month…

The boxes that I’ve covered up say ‘amount’, ‘owed’ and ‘under’ but as for most items there’s set amounts to pay each month I decided to use it more as a budget calculator. The only things that will change over the month will be my Etsy earnings and food and petrol (which I added into expenditure later) and I’ll update these as I go along. The idea with this is that I’ll then be able to work out how much I should have ‘spare’ at the end of the month and from there will be able to work out how much I can spend on ‘stuff’ throughout the month in order to leave with me with a decent savings contribution. This part didn’t happen this month as everything spare is going on Christmas presents!15

Expense tracking

On the back of that I then printed debt tracker sheet as the expense tracker that came with the set was landscape format.

As you can see it was pretty easy to cover up with the washi. I’ve then been logging my expenditure each day and colour coding it to allow me to track it better:

Black – general spending/Christmas presents etc

Orange – food and drink

Red – Etsy related costs

Pink – petrol

Receipts and vouchers

If you saw my tour of this Filofax when I first set it up you’ll have seen these pockets in use already.

In the pocket made out of the same papers as my dividers I keep any money off vouchers and in the plastic pocket I keep all receipts that I need (clothing, electronics etc). I feel like I’ll need to go through this regularly or move it out of this Filo otherwise it’s going to start impeding my ability to close the planner (which I’m nearly at already).

I’m pretty happy with this set up so far – knowing I have to keep every receipt and note down the spends in my planner has made me think more about what I’m spending but the real test will be come the end of the month. I’ll be able to tally up exactly what I’ve spent my money on this month and then hopefully make some plans to reduce that amount next month.

How do you track your expenses? Drop me a link to your set up below!

Em x