Expense Tracking (Part III) Adjustment and continuous tracking

One of the things that you will discover is I really like numbers and data, more so as I’ve gotten older and presumably wiser. I trust the raw numbers because there is an absolute truth to them; they paint the real story. That gets us to the next and final part of my trilogy on expense tracking first we started with collecting the data then the analysis and now we’re onto the adjustment and continuous tracking. But first a word from our sponsor, common sense! This last step has the biggest chance of failure. I say that from experience because if I run into issues it’s probably because I tried to adjust too much and didn’t track enough. Proceed with some measure of caution and you should be fine. Remember if you fail or something doesn’t work reset and readjust. Now back to our regularly scheduled post: Adjustment and tracking. Continue Reading

Expense Tracking (Part II) Analysis

There is a lot of truth in data, especially when it comes to expense tracking. Once you have the data the truth behind the numbers will start to emerge. In Part I, we covered entering data, and if you’ve entered everything you might start to see some unexpected realities. Some people will see exactly what they’re expecting, but most of us will have some surprises, I usually find one or two.  This part can be a little scary. I know that we spend money on things we don’t NEED to but do anyway. Seeing the reality of that can be a little daunting, especially if you haven’t done an exercise like this. When I completed this exercise the first time, I really had no expectations though I figured I spent too much on eating out, smokes (I smoked back then), and booze. It was a little frightening to see the Continue Reading