Tracking Your Spending?

Tracking Spending is not like Counting Calories

Spending your tracking can sound as undelightful as tracking your calories. Sure if you’re trying to get competition level fit or reach peak performance, it might be worthwhile to track calories to achieve the goal. That being said, when it comes to the every day meal, most people I imagine do not want to know how much calories, proteins, fat or carbs are in a hard boiled egg.

While I like to think that I am healthy (though my dad-bod might say otherwise) there seems to be little value to me to tracking my calorie intake on a day to day basis.

However, the same can’t be said for tracking your spending. Personally I have always been frugal, or けち and so tracking is something I did since I was young. When I would get a little bit of money (such as $20 from the tooth fairy) I would put that into my little piggy bank and never touch it. It would make me feel good to know that it was just chilling there, and so the more I tracked coming in, the better I felt as a kid.

Adulting Costs

When it came to going to university, where now I had some real adulting expenses, it seemed paramount to track how much money comes in and goes out on a daily, monthly and annually basis so that I can have an overview of my financial lifestyle.

It occurred to me that not everyone tracks / plans for their money to the same degree. Some will get their salary into their bank account, and they know how much rent will be, but basically will go about their month buying groceries and move tickets without specifically planning or tracking the outgoing money. Towards the end of the month, they might look at their bank balance being a little low and then hold back on spending before the next month’s salary comes in. Trust me, I have been there too with eating curry rice for a week and sneaking company bento’s to bring home for dinner but then I realized theres costs to not having a bigger picture idea of my personal spending.

I will admit the circumstance I outlined above is almost a privilege. For those who are at the very limit of their finances, they have no choice but to track their spending because they would be juggling between rent, food and warmth, and when that is the case knowing where every dollar goes becomes dire.

However for those who consider themselves “comfortable but could do with more” tracking personal spending becomes less of a necessity. You can somewhat comfortably go out to dinner, pay your rent, and make sure your netflix subscription is covered without worrying too much. Many bank apps will help track your spending for you to give you some idea of “where did all of my money go this month” but it is very passive.

Are you… Money?

I would argue, for those in that fit the description above, it would still be worth tracking your spending down to the dollar or yen. The reason is, that it will allow you to have a clear understanding of where you’re spending your month that you’ve worked to hard towards, and so that if there are any life style changes that you want to make, you can see where specifically you want to cut back and where you want to grow.

More importantly though, I recently listened to a podcast episode that claimed “I Love Money” which I thought was a very strong thesis claiming that we are in fact, money to some degree. It might be a bit bold to go to that extent, but if you consider that you are exchanging time (a diminishing resource that is your most valuable) for money, then money almost becomes a representative of time? Have you ever tried to calculate what your hourly wage is?

This is not the hour wage that is on the contract, or your monthly rate divided by hours, but includes everything you do for work such as having dinner with colleagues / clients, shopping for new clothes for the office, commuting by train etc. All of that time, and your after tax income, if you were to chart it out, gives you a good idea of how much you’re getting paid for an hour of your life.

This can unlock some interesting feelings but I digress. If you want to learn more about measuring your life in $ per hour, I recommend reading “Your Money or Your Life”, a good quick weekend read that can help you reshape your relationship with money.

Where does it all go?

Going back to the main point, I would argue that it is worthwhile to track where you’re spending your money, because your money is effectively your time / life energy, and having recently become a father to a lovely daughter, I get bittersweet feelings thinking that while I am working, she is behind me on the floor playing, and that when I put her to sleep, tomorrow she will be a little bit bigger. Our time is so darn valuable, that the time that we exchange for money, it is worth having a clear idea of where that energy is then being spent.

I am curious, do you track your money or use apps like Moneytree, Zaim or Money Forward to track your spending?

Next Up

In the future I will discuss proactively planning rather than passively tracking but tracking is step one to become conscious of where your time is going, and I challenge you to try just for a day or for a week to note where you spend your money and see if that unlocks any new insights for you!. On a more personal note. My family is currently going through the home searching process, navigating house makers, land real estate and bank loans. If you’re curious let me know and I’ll write up our experience 😃

Next I will talk about giving to charity in Japan