spending tracker Archives - Our Bill Pickle

The super simple way I track our spending

February 16, 2021

Our spending tracker is so simple I hesitate to call it a spending tracker. Here's how I'm tracking our spending using Google Sheets.

Our spending tracker is so simple I hesitate to even call it a spending tracker.

There’s nothing fancy about it. In fact, I went out of my way to make sure it was the opposite of fancy.

What can I say? I like my budgeting tools to be functional above all else.

And this spending tracker is definitely functional.

Here’s why I decided to start tracking our spending, what our spending tracker looks like (and why we went with Google Sheets) and how it’s been working for us over the last few months.

5 simple things I’m doing to smash my savings goals this year

January 21, 2020

Five super simple ways to smash your savings goals this year

Debt repayment is still high on the to do list, but I want to save money this year, too.

In fact, if you look at our 2020 goals, two of the three are focused on saving money. It’s fair to say it’s something that’s on my mind coming into the new decade.

Are you feeling the same way but not sure where to start? Here’s a peek at some of the super simple things I’m doing to save money this year.

What I learned from tracking my spending for a month

January 22, 2019

Three things I learned from tracking my spending

I’ve never been one to track my spending.

Let me clarify: I’ve never been one to track my spending in precise detail.

In fact, our budget is designed in a way that makes it possible to avoid doing so; after all the bills are paid, I have a line that I call miscellaneous which is how we pay for more variable expenses, like gas and food (I wrote more about that here, if you’re curious about how our budget works).

It’s definitely not zero-based budgeting, but it has been working for us/

However, the further along we go in our debt-free journey, the more I have found myself asking the big question:

Where, exactly, is all our money even going?!

Our budget gives a good sense of the answer to that question, but I wanted more details.

So in November, I embarked on what I called tracktember – a full month of tracking all my spending. You can read more about the parameters of the exercise here.

Today, I am following up on the promise to report back on how it went.

Spoiler alert: it went OK.