Today is the first day of tracking my income and expenses for the month of April. Remember how I said I would post every day for the previous day’s transactions. I will also post at the bottom of the entry the totals in the following format so that I can have something concrete to compare to each day.
So all I did yesterday was two loads of laundry. I did two washes and managed to dry both sets in the same dryer so I ended up saving $1.00 from my laundry budget for the day. Although I budgeted $4.50 for laundry and only spent $3.50 I am not counting the $1.00 as part of my savings. I am just saying that right now I have not saved anything this month so far.
Income for the day: $0.00
Expenses for the day: $3.50
Income for the month to date: $0.00
Expenses for the month to date: $3.50
Net effect: -$3.50
Did I save money: No.
How are you going to accrue for expenses that happen incrementally over the course of a month (example: rent)? You could just take your monthly rent payment and divide it by the amount of days in the month. You could do the same for your pay as well.
I don’t know how to account for things at the end of the month (also variable) like electric or gas.
What do you think? I think adding this to your daily analysis would yield great benefits since there are expenses that you accrue daily and don’t actually think about.
Tmac dude! I did not even think about spreading rent out over the month and calculating it as part of my daily expenses. Maybe I will do something like that later but for now I am just checking each income and each expense category as when I write the check or when I get a deposit made. I use Money to track my stuff so it it is easier for me right now to just take the total for the day as each individual entry.
try line drying your clothes to save some cash on the electricity bills. there was an article in the NY times today about it.
I would do this but unfortunately I live in an apartment complex that does not allow this. I cannot even put up one of those small fold out dryer things because I live in a high traffic area that is close to the main office. Thanks for the tip any way.