I started tracking upon the spending freeze, we plan to continue!

This is one of my goals for 2008. I started tracking every penny January 1st.

If you are a person who uses a notebook to track spending, saving receipts, I found a great home budget book at Staples for $10.00. It's called Adams financial records Home/Office Budget.

It's a easy-to-use finance management book designed to track daily, weekly, and monthly expenses. It includes sections for Tax preparation records, Investment records, Insurance/Health records, and home imporvement records as well. Simplified Layout pages are organized in a simple format with common monthly expense ites listed first (mortgage/rent, electricity, trash/water) and variable items last (groceries, medical bills, cleaning, etc.)

Income - Adequate space for an individual and spouse to record primary income, in addition to any other income. Space in which to total all earnings has been included.

There is a totals column for each of your expenses. The book also has total expense, allows for totaling of each weekly expense entry to arrive at a monthly figure. There is a column for your expenses and a column for each day of the month. It's numbered from 1 -31. Pages are not pre-dated. Begin maintaining home budget immediately without wasting pages.

This book also has a yearly summary designated for annual review of budget once monthly totals are recorded.

I LOVE this budgeting book. It helps me keep every thing organized.

I agree, I started doing this when the FTJ project started and it was like OWWW! Dh and I both do it. I notice now that before I buy something, especially an impulse item, I find myself thinking "do I really want to have to write THAT down?".

Continue. The more data you have, the better off you'll be.

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I have been doing this since we started. I will start another entry in my journal for the rest of this month and all of Feb. My dh and I were going over the receipts this weekend and we found somethings we can cut out. He is finally on board becasue of the savings account we started and the van being paid off. That was enough to convince me. My dh is a visual person and he knows I will NEED his support until this really becomes a habit for me he told me he was 100% on board.

Thanks for the new step. It will be fun to see where our money goes this month too.

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A Family of 5's quest to forget the Joneses.

Great Step Kim!! I started this in the new year and I LOVE seeing where every penny goes. This has become part of DH and I's dinner conversation, we talk about did we spend any money today? etc. I am GLAD this is a step it is keeping me motivated to continue tracking!!

this will be an easy one, but it is an awesome thing. i have been doing this from the beginning of january. i think i'll always do this!

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My choices yesterday create my today. My choices today create my tomorrow.

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I had a funny feeling this would be the next step. I use to do this all the time but it's been awhile. It will be good to start doing this again.

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Mom to dd (age 9) and ds (age 11)
blogging daily about purpose and personal identity

I've been tracking my spending since the 1st, so I will just keep on!

Its been really good to see where all the $ goes, and keeps me from wanting to spend anything because I don't want to have to write it down.

Sounds good. Do you guys carry a small notebook in your purse and write everything down right as you spend it?

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Jodie....Wife to Andrew (1995)
Mommy to Riley (2000) and Wyatt (2003)