Track Your Miscellaneous Spending for a Month

Here's a good way to get a handle on monthly miscellaneous spendering. For one month, carry a notebook with you everywhere you go. Every single time you buy something with cash, a debit card, a check, or a credit card, write down what you bought and how much you spent. It doesn't matter how little something costs-write it down.

If you are married or if you live with a partner, your spouse or partner should do the same thing. At the end of the month, add up all of the money you spent on nonessentials. You may be sensed at the total. Use the information in your spending notebook to fill in the monthly totals in the variable expenses section of your budget worksheet

Add and Subtract Your Dollar Amounts

A positive outcome. It's good news if the number you end up with is a positive number, unless the reason for a positive result is either of the following:
1. Every month you're only paying the minimum amount due on your credit cards. If you are, it will take you years to pay of your credit card balances, and in the meantime, you're wasting money paying lots of interest on your debts
2. You have little or nothing left in your checking account at the end of each month and you're contributing nothing to savings. Living without a financial cushion means that tf you're hit with an unexpected expense, you lose your Job, or you experience some other setback, the impact on your life can be disastrous.

If either or both of the above descriptions apply to you, look for expenses in your budget that you can reduce or completely eliminate. That way, each month you can pay more on your debts so you`ll have more money left over every month is case of an emergency. It`s also possible, depending on how much you are able to cut out of your budget, that you may need to figure out ways to increase your income.

A negative outcome:
If you got a negative number when you subtracted your monthly expenses from your monthly income, you are spending more than your income each month, and you may be staying financially afloat (just barely, perhaps) by using credit cards and cash advances to pay your essential expenses. Maybe you're running the balance on your checking account overdraft line of credit, or maybe you're borrowing money from friends or family. You also may be falling farther and farther behind on some of your financial obhgations because you can't afford to pay them. In other words, you're on the track to financial ruin, and it's time to change direction.