My December 2019 Challenge
Track my spending and expenses for 3 months
For the month of December 2019, my challenge is to track my spending and expenses for 3 months using the Spendee app.
Ever since I was in middle school, I have always been good at tracking my expenses and spending. I would input my daily spending into an Excel spreadsheet and at the end of the month, my parents will look at my spreadsheet with me to help me “analyze” my spending.
I remember Dragon ball Z playing cards took up a big chunk of my spending and they would explain to me where I could save up in order to buy what I want in the coming future. Years of doing this eventually instill this “You can buy anything if you are willing to save” mentality.
When I reach college, I stop tracking my expenses because I was generally good at feeling out how much money I have spent that month and I was living very thrifty anyway.
Why I decide to start tracking my spendings again?
While I have always been good at estimating my financial condition and living below my means, in 2019 there were many months where I am cutting it too close in term of cash flow
- My son started school in April
- My wife no longer has a monthly income, thus home and her living expenses fell on to me
- New home mortgage is based on floating interest rate
- I had to pay a lot of my new home’s furniture on credit using my bank’s credit card (0% interest + admin fee for 12 months)
- I made it a point to save money monthly to save and invest
I made the mistake of thinking school expenses are fixed when there will be times the school will tell you to buy a certain items for my kid to bring to school. While generally these items are cheap (certain colored shirts for a school events, or certain toy items), they do add up.
I also made the mistake that many first time home buyers do, that is buying a house that are too expensive. I was so worried of buying a house too small that will last me only for 1 child, that my current mortgage takes 45% of my income every month.
I took advantages of a lot of deals and promotions that furniture stores have with my bank, which allow me to pay off my furniture monthly through my credit card at 0% interest and 0 processing and admin fee. While not a mistake, I have to remember to set aside money to pay the monthly installments.
What I hope to achieve from this challenge
By no means am I in financial difficulty, but neither am I comfortable because these new variables hinder my capability to set aside money to invest every month.
What I hope to achieve by doing this challenge is to give me a better picture on my financial situation in the foreseeable future.
By setting aside a fixed amount based on the worst case scenario of each of these variable expenses, I will be able to decide the minimum of money set aside to save and invest.
Whatever is left over from these variable expenses (since they are based on worst case scenario, there will be money left over every month), will go into the save & invest account quarterly.
Method of tracking
To track my spendings, I will use the free app, Spendee which is available in iOS and Android because that is the beauty of technology. I no longer have to create an excel or google spreadsheet when there is an app that will do it for you and show you the result beautifully.
By the way, if you are interested in doing this challenge with me using the Spendee app, please click on the link below to use my code. By using the link, both you and I will be able to use the app’s premium version for 1 month for free. I will not make any money if you click on the link, but I am curious to see the premium version of the app since I enjoy using the app.
