You can track your monthly expenses by reviewing your bank and credit card statements, logging your expenses in a spreadsheet, or using a budgeting app. Tracking your expenses is an important part of budgeting, and it can help you stay within your budget and identify areas to reduce spending if needed.
A budgeting app, like the WalletHub app, is more convenient for tracking expenses than using a spreadsheet since you can sync your financial accounts to have your expenses automatically tracked. You can also see your transactions from multiple different accounts all in one place instead of reviewing the individual statements from each account separately.
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Below, we’ll walk you through the different ways you can track your monthly expenses.
1. Check Bank and Credit Card Statements
You can collect paper copies of your bank and credit card statements or log into your accounts online to see a digital copy of your statements there. Each statement will contain a list of the transactions you made within a specific period. The statements will also include the date for each transaction and the amount spent.
If you are getting the statements online, you should be able to either print or download your statement as a PDF to save for your records. Some banks like Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo allow you to export your transactions into an Excel or CSV sheet, which you can open as a spreadsheet or import into a budgeting app.
Reviewing your statements regularly can help you keep track of where your money is going. You can also analyze the statements to make sure you are not spending more than your income and see how much money you have left for future goals.
2. Make a Spreadsheet
Using a spreadsheet tool like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets can help you keep track of all your expenses. With these spreadsheets, you can create separate columns for things like the date, the amount, and any notes you have for each expense. In addition, you can easily group similar expenses together, such as household expenses or travel expenses, and sort transactions by price or retailer.
Tracking your expenses using a spreadsheet can be time consuming since you may need to enter the transactions manually. Not all banks will allow you to export your transactions into a spreadsheet.
If you can only download your statements as a PDF, you may need to use a program like Adobe Acrobat to convert your PDF to a file format that you can import into a spreadsheet. Alternatively, there are tools like Tiller, which you can install for Excel or Google Sheets to connect your financial accounts and have your transactions automatically imported into a spreadsheet.
3. Use a Budgeting App
Budgeting apps, like the WalletHub app, are convenient, easy-to-use tools that can help you track your monthly expenses. Depending on the app, you can track your expenses manually, sync your financial accounts to have your expenses tracked automatically, or both.
A benefit of using a budgeting app is that you can easily see your past expenses anywhere you go. These apps may also provide insight into your spending, so you can more quickly identify areas where you are overspending. Some of these apps even offer free plans.
Best Free Apps to Track Your Expenses
WalletHub’s Expense Tracking Tools
WalletHub allows you to sync your financial accounts, like your bank accounts and credit cards, so your expenses are automatically tracked and you can see all your accounts in one place. WalletHub’s expense tracker also lets you organize your expenses in five different ways. You can do things like track expenses by needs, wants and savings, or track your expenses by categories like food, transportation or housing, for example.
WalletHub also has a payment validator, which makes sure that the amount that you are charged matches what you expect to pay. If it does not, you will get alerted to the discrepancy.
Track expenses by category
Track needs/must-haves, wants/nice-to-haves, and savings
Sync your financial accounts for automatic tracking
Manual tracking is available if you don’t want to link your accounts
4. Choose a Budgeting Strategy
A budgeting strategy can help you track your transactions and ensure that they’re in line with your overall financial strategy. While some strategies, like the 50/30/20 rule, require you to track your expenses by listing them into needs, wants, and savings categories and following a pre-defined limit for each, strategies like the envelope method allow you to choose how to organize your tracked expenses. We’ll break down some popular budgeting strategies below.
50/30/20 Rule: You organize your expenses into three categories – needs, wants, and savings – and then track your transactions over time to make sure 50% of your spending goes to needs, 30% goes to wants, and 20% is used for savings.
Envelope Budgeting: You group your expenses by category and assign each category to a digital or physical envelope and give each a spending limit. Then, you keep track of your expenses and subtract what you spend from the appropriate envelope’s budgeted limit either right when you make a purchase or a few times throughout the month. Once the money allocated to a particular envelope has been used up, you cannot spend any more in that category for the month.
Zero-Based Budgeting: You track every single expense and subtract them one by one until you account for every dollar of your income. You should always get zero when you subtract your expenses, including any contributions to savings and retirement accounts, from your income.
Learn more about popular budgeting strategies.
Benefits of Tracking Your Expenses
Shows you where your money is going.
Tracking your expenses lets you see exactly what you are spending your money on and how much you are spending.
Helps prevent overspending.
People tend to be more mindful of their spending when they track their expenses closely. It’s also more obvious when you are running low on funds, so you can reduce your spending if needed and avoid making unnecessary purchases.
Reveals bad spending habits.
You can see if you are spending too much on certain items. For example, a $7 latte at your local coffee shop may not seem like much at the time. But when you track your purchases for a month, you might be surprised that the five-times-a-week habit is costing you $140 a month and around $1,680 a year. Tracking your spending could also reveal why you may not have enough money left from your paycheck to put into savings.
Helps you identify areas to reduce spending.
If you are looking to cut down on spending, tracking all your expenses can help you identify some non-essential expenses you can either reduce or eliminate.
Helps you achieve your financial goals.
Tracking your expenses lets you see how much money you have left over, after taking care of your living expenses, for financial goals like taking a vacation, buying a new car, or making a down payment on a new home.
Increases the chances that you spot fraudulent charges.
There are more than 400,000 reports of identity theft involving credit cards per year, according to the FTC. These reports include people who had an unauthorized charge on their credit card account. Tracking your expenses allows you to spot any fraudulent charges quickly so you can limit any potential damage to your budget and credit score. All the major credit card networks provide you with a $0 liability guarantee for unauthorized transactions that you report or that they catch.
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