How to Curb Your Spending & Start A Budget Right From Your Bank Account

So in the spirit of budgeting, the first thing I needed to do was get an idea of where all my money goes. I mean I make pretty good money, it’s not a ton, but it’s a lot more than I did years ago. So why do I still mostly live paycheck to paycheck? Well, because I don’t budget. I don’t pay any attention to where it’s all going-and that’s a problem.

Because of this, there is a good chance that I am missing out on some unique ways to save money. For example, I was speaking to a friend of mine about this just the other day and she told me that after going through her monthly budget, she discovered that she was actually paying far too much for her car insurance and she needed to know how to buy car insurance for an affordable price. You see, she had forgotten to compare different insurance policies when the time to renew her policy came along and this meant that she was paying more for her car insurance than she needed to. If she had done that then she might have found a car insurance company such as Staveley Head and would have realised that she could have saved a lot of money on her insurance if she had only known!

Fortunately, my friend told me that she managed to find some fantastic car insurance comparison websites online and she has now switched providers. Honestly, her new car insurance policy with an insurer similar to State Farm is significantly cheaper than her last one and yet she is still getting the level of coverage she needs for her car. I suppose what I am trying to say is that if I can take a closer look at my budget, maybe I can make a saving like my friend. Oh, and I will definitely be shopping around to see if I can get a better deal on my car insurance!

Anyway, most banks allow you to go in and categorize your spending, so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. My online account allows you to simply click on a transaction and put it in a group and even add notes about it so you don’t forget what it was for. That’s where we start, and you should go ahead and log into your bank account and start categorizing.

I did a test period of 45 days-from February 1st to March 17th, and now this period included my tax return so I’ve removed the amount of the return and the (rough) amount of it from both my payouts (I paid off a bunch off all of my credit cards and a few other things with it) and my income to make this more like a normal amount of time. I even went through my credit cards to see how much I am charging.

For this period, I spent/paid out roughly $4,108.45.
For this period, I charged/went in debt roughly $1,649.52.
For this period, my income was roughly $3,526.21 (not including income from blogging.)

See the problem? Why on earth am I spending so much MORE (roughly $2,231.76 more) than what I’m earning? This is how we end up with credit card debt-and yes I paid it all off and already have a good chunk of it again. This is not okay. This is where I realize that something needs to change. But what?

Here’s the part where you now get to sort your bank account history by individual sections so you can see how much you spent in each of the categories you outlined previously. This will help you see where your spending has gone to. Here’s a break down of my expenditures:

Here’s the part where you look at your break down of charges and decide where your trouble spots are. Once you’ve identified those parts of your life that are costing you too much money you can make a plan going forward for how to fix it. Pick out the things you are willing to give up or do more frugally, and make some goals going forward.