Tracking your expenses

You know your income, but do you know your expenses? If you were to approach a trained financial planner, he/she would usually would want to establish the amounts you are spending. While some of the expenses are annual ( insurance payments, tax payments, renewal fees), monthly ( rent, utility payments), some weekly and some sporadic. You should also not miss out on those expenses which are unplanned. Capturing those unplanned shopping trips and long drives which burnt 1K worth of fuel are also important. The important part is to capture them and include them in your financial plan.

While most control freaks like me would logically have an excel sheet, going into details in an excel sheet is a very tedious thing. I found this excellent site www.expenseview.com where it allows setting up expense accounts and tracking them. Check it out, its worth a try.

Why am I trying it? I am planning to buy some term insurance and would like to get a hang of how much I am actually spending and on what. Although I have a fairly good idea in big buckets, knowing the details will help me understand how these expenses will behave over the next few years ( shopping is a very small component now, am sure it will explode ;-) ). With greater income, I am trying to see if I can flush in more money to my investments.

Let me know what you think of expenseview.