4/04/2014

Weekly Spending Journal: MMMC - Level 2, Activity 2

Last week, I whined about my spending journal.  Yup, whined!

A big thank you to Morgaine and Money, NZ Muse, & ND Chic who weighed in with some suggestions on how to tackle this a different way.  I've decided to go with  ND's suggestion and visited My 1/2 Dozen Daily.  She did a Spending Journal App review a while back and made a recommendation for Spending Tracker.

It's only been a week, but I'm already a huge fan!  The app she suggested, which happens to be free in the Apple Store is pretty fantastic.  You can get the pro-version for $2.99 which let's you link to Dropbox and export your transactions to excel.  I haven't done it yet, but I definitely want to use that feature.

I'm going to start posting weekly updates on how we're doing staying within our $600/2 weeks on Fridays...starting today!

Here's how the first week went using our new tool.  The first image was taken yesterday, and the second I took this morning - so you can see how it automatically updates based on some of the settings I chose (carry-over).

 

Items that are normally categorized as groceries such as dog food, cold medicine, and toothpaste are now appropriately tracked. 

One of the great parts about this app - other than it's super easy, not a notebook and has some cool features is that I can take a screen shot and text it to Jordan!  That makes sharing details of our spending with him super simple.  He actually said it was the easiest to understand from any other method we have tried. 

We have $236.61 to last us another week.  I would say wish us luck, but perhaps wish us discipline would be more appropriate.

Related Posts:

  • My Money, My Choices - Level 3, Activity 4The fourth activity in level 3 is getting set up on a company pension plan if you're not already on one - thankfully I am but unfortunately, Jordan's company doesn't have one. Mine is a defined contribution (not defined be… Read More
  • My Money, My Choices - Level 3, Activity 1This activity takes us through calculating our personal savings rate.  Gail tells us that there is basically two different types of savings. Long Term - Retirement Planned Spending - Emergencies, Kids School Funds, Vaca… Read More
  • My Money, My Choices - Level 2 Complete Now that we've got the spending tracking going well, and posting those updates to our spending journal (I'll do monthly posts for those summarizing), I've marked Level 2 Complete!  This step doesn't actually ever end… Read More
  • My Money, My Choices - Level 3, Activity 3 A couple days ago, I wrote about creating the Emergency Fund, today is about automating it.  This one is really simple - just set up an automatic savings programme.  With a goal of $25,000 it's going to take us a … Read More
  • My Money, My Choices - Level 3, Activity 2This activity is to set up an Emergency Fund...which Jordan and I have...but is it being used properly?  This is what Gail says an emergency fund is for: Needing new tires is not an emergency. Nor is a new roof, that re… Read More

6 comments:

  1. I'm happy that you liked my suggestion. I really liked how Carla had explained the app. It will work out well for you :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She did such a great job, thanks again for the suggestion!

      Delete
  2. Thanks for the shout-out Jessie! I tried a couple different apps and didn't find one I liked. I just downloaded this one to give it a try! Good luck and good discipline ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just curious, what type of phone do you have that you use that with? I'm thinking of getting a tablet because I have a company phone (blackberry) for work. I guess I could use that app with a tablet, right?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have an iPhone, but it looks like it's available from the Google Store and the Windows Store too.

      http://www.mhriley.com/spendingtracker/

      Delete

Hi! Thank you for stopping by and leaving a message.

Links ♥

Followers