Where Did All The Money Go?

Posted on March 7, 2008
Filed Under Spending, budget |

Have you ever gotten to the end of the money before the end of the month? Do you wonder where your paycheck goes every week? I know I do and no matter how hard I try, I just don’t seem to be able to write it all down in my notebook.

I have tried excel spreadsheets and failed. I have tried my trusty little notebook. I have tried Quicken but none of these work unless you actually write the stuff down. Admittedly, I seem to be a bit challenged in this department.

The Millionaire Next Door states that one of the things ALL first generation millionaires have in common is that they not only know where the money went but where it’s going to go. Do you know how much money you spent on clothes last year or how much you will spend this year?

Make Budgeting FUN

I found this really cool online application called Expensr. I seem to be much more consistent with recording things on the computer than on paper and Expensr not only lets you track your expenses and income but it almost makes it a game. Yup, budgeting can be fun when you can see how you stack up against other people in your group by age, sex, marital status, location, education and the list goes on.

The one thing I am not sure of is how they compute that I spend less by the day and less by the month average but still spend more than 84% of the “in my forties” users. When I was doing this, I did use actual figures and because I am catching bills up with my tax refund, my first week of spending was abnormally high.

And here you can see how women save as compared to men and how my spending ranks against other people in my sex and age group as well as other popular tags.

This is an example of the analysis feature and it’s a really graphic look at where your money is going. You can see that miniscule little 1% of food in there and the inflated utilities and debt payment from catching up.

Expensr also has a budgeting feature where you can insert your budgeted amount for different categories. It automatically tallies your income and expenses against your budgeted amount.

I believe it also will import from your checking account but I have not tried that feature and I doubt that I will. I am none to sure about giving web applications that much access to my life. I also want to track my cash expenditures and mixing the import with manual entries just confuses me.

Oh, and did I mention it is FREE? Yup, absolutely free so you can give it a whirl and see what you think. It’s www.expensr.com If you try it out and want to see how your spending compares to mine, I am signed up under CindyS feel free to add me as a friend.

Help keep me awake to write by buying me a cup of coffee! .

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One Response to “Where Did All The Money Go?”

No More Excuses! 50 Free or Low Cost Budget Tools | Oh My Aching Debts on March 7th, 2008 10:10 pm

[...] Oh My Aching Debts A Guide to One Woman’s Fight to Survive the Tough Times, Get Out of Debt, and Save Money « Where Did All The Money Go? [...]

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