Daily Budget

Another goal of mine is to figure out finances. My generation in particular seems to be completely lost when it comes to budgeting or financing anything. I have heard it in a few different places that Generation X (which encompasses my generation in this example) is the first generation that will be less financially secure than our parents. Credit card debt is out of control, and hardly anyone my age can get a mortgage.

My first step in understanding finances is to keep detailed records of my budget. If you don't know how much your life actually costs, how can you understand how to finance it or make a plan?

In order for this bookkeeping to give you information, it has to be meticulously maintained. The goal is to figure out how much your own life really costs and where you are spending your money. Since I'm such a huge fan of spreadsheets, I have put mine into Google Docs on my Gmail (a great accessory to a free email server) so that I don't have to have my file with me and can update from anywhere I can access my Gmail. This is my basic format in three categories:


Food:


Shopping:**


Travel: No purchases yet, but this is my format.


And then I even have a summary page that gives me my daily total:


I'm purchasing an accordion file today to store my receipts, and I'll post each morning with the totals from the day before. I've put particular categories into these spreadsheets in order to sort by category once the data has been collected for a month or so. By then I'll have a better idea of how much life really costs and in what categories I am spending the most money.

**I have purposely left out the laptop purchase that I mentioned yesterday because I combined Christmas gifts and savings to buy it, and it isn't really part of my personal budget.