Financial Tip: Know What You Spend
Published on October 30, 2009 by chloejo · 3 CommentsYou need to know what you spend, every month. You can’t manage your finances, amass savings, take nice vacations, donate to animal charities, or buy new Stella boots for fall without that annoying guilty aftertaste, unless you know how much your life really costs. You might think you need $8,000 per month, but until you tally your statements and factor in the beach rental, the harrowing dental bill, and all those freakin’ green juices, you don’t really know.
$7 a day for green juice adds up, Sistren!
Here’s an assignment for the data-challenged among us:
- Gather up your bank statements for one full year. If you’re already hooked into a program like Quicken, great, use the Reports function.
- Add together your total expenses for a full 12 months (make sure you’re including expensive months like August and December).
- Divide by 12.
So now you know. Yes, it’s a lot of money, isn’t it? Now you can plan accordingly.
Todays blog tip via DailyWorth: a free daily personal finance email for women which delivers practical tips, empowering ideas and the occasional kick in the pants.
Tags: Daily Worth, Finance tips for women, Green Juice, Preparing for Life, Saving Money
Readers Comments (3)
[...] ***The GirlieGirl Army*** » Blog Archive » Financial Tip: Know What You Spend girliegirlarmy.com/blog/20091030/ – view page – cached You need to know what you spend, every month. You can’t manage your finances, amass savings, take nice vacations, donate to animal charities, or buy new Stella boots for fall without that… (Read more)You need to know what you spend, every month. You can’t manage your finances, amass savings, take nice vacations, donate to animal charities, or buy new Stella boots for fall without that annoying guilty aftertaste, unless you know how much your life really costs. You might think you need $8,000 per month, but until you tally your statements and factor in the beach rental, the harrowing dental bill, and all those freakin’ green juices, you don’t really know. (Read less) — From the page [...]
I have begun using mint.com and it is great! It’s a bit of a wake-up call to see how many negative thousands of dollars I am worth when all of my student loans are taken into consideration, but it makes it easy to create a budget and view everything from one location.
You input in passwords for other sites and they gather the data from your bank account, credit cards, loans, etc. Works very well.
And unfortunately, so many people think they need $8,000 per month, when they make $4,000 per month. Financial responsibility and living within one’s means is another part of conscious consumerism, and vegan eco-friendly greenies like us are in an excellent position to embody this, which is really just an extension of the philosophy we preach.