These past few months, our spending has been out of control. Part of the reason for this is a major family crisis that had us all focusing on other things and spending money out of necessity. Now that things are starting to get back to normal, I want to make sure that we curb that spending, and not fall into the trap of doing things the way were had been doing them before.
One thing that will be really helpful to us is to be able to see exactly where our money is going each month. And all of that petty spending that gets done is often hard to track. So, I’ve asked my husband to save any receipts whenever he makes a purchase starting the first of the month, and I will do the same. Then I am going to add up all of those receipts and take action. Having the totals in hand will allow we to do a number of things:
- See where the money is going
- Brainstorm doing things differently to save money
- Cutting down on spending because we are suddenly accountable.
That last one is really important. I’ve already seen this as an influence on our spending. Since I know everything is being tracked, we’ve been making better choices and creating plans to save before we spend. For example, I’m making sure that there are breakfast and lunch choices for my husband to take with him for work instead of having to purchase food while there. I’m already making the effort to further cut down the grocery bill by getting those coupons cut and printed and doing better meal planning.
For that second thing, brainstorm doing things differently to save money, I am hoping that certain patterns will emerge. If we happen to spend a lot of money in one particular area, for example, there might be an investment that we can make to save in the future, such as monitoring gas prices on the days we are likely to need gas or stocking the freezer with more homemade convenient meals.