Ever since I started working in 2015, I update a personal income sheet daily with the amount of money I spent on different categories. These expenses are daily expenditure like food, transport, phone bills, personal, entertainment and others.I also include my salary and income to the personal income sheet on a monthly basis.
It has been 1672 days since I started tracking my expenses on 1 Jan 2015 and I still do it everyday. You may be wondering why do I do it and the simple explanation is data. With the data of my spending and earnings, I will be able to make appropriate decisions to achieve the outcome that I want. It can be decisions such as which is the best credit card to use, expenses to cut down on or best payment method to use for offline stores.
Just like how a company operates with money as the blood that moves in and out of the system. If the company continually gives out more money than it takes in, eventually it will run out of cash and close down. That is why you have the finance department who makes sure that money flowing in or out of the company are tracked promptly.
Similarly, if an individual does not know how much they have earned, spent or saved at the end of the month, he/she may find themselves in the negatives someday and not have enough money for next month. So if you want to be in control of your future and avoid running out of cash, start planning and tracking your finances. You got to be “honest” with yourself about this cause at the end of the day, it is your own finances and survival at stake.
Now that you know the “Why”, let's look at the “How”. For me, I use an excel spreadsheet to track my daily expenses and monthly income. I have created a template of how I track my expenses and income. You can click on the link below to download it.
Click here to download: http://bit.ly/personalfinancesheet
To use this personal finance income statement excel spreadsheet, simply fill in the amount that you spend according to the category and date.
Example: If you spent $10 on food on 29 July 2019, go to the tab “July”, fill in the blank with “$10” that corresponds to the day “29” and category “food”.
For convenience, I have created individual worksheets for the 12 months in a year. And in the “summary” tab, the amount spent from each month’s tab will also auto-populate into the summary table.
The summary table gives you a birds-eye view of your income, expenses and amount saved. With this data, you will know if you are spending within your budget or exceeding it. It will also let you know if your income is able to support your spending habits. Otherwise you will know which category of spending you should be cutting down.
Now that you know how to track your expenses and income, let's look at how to automate your savings so that you can have more time to do the things you enjoy.
For automating of savings, I personally use DBS iBanking so i will be showing how i did it with DBS platform. Do note that you will need to have an account that credits your salary and another account designated for savings.
In DBS iBanking, the term used to setup schedule for transferring of funds from one account to another is called “Standing Instructions”. More information is available here (https://www.posb.com.sg/personal/ibanking/faq/standinginstruction.page)
Instead of writing down the steps, I will be showing screenshots to make it easier for your reference.
Step 1
After logging in, hover over “Transfer” and click on “More Transfer Services”
Step 2
Under “Other Services”, click on “Set Up Standing instruction”
Step 3
This is where you will fill in the details to automate your savings
- Account to transfer money from
- Amount to Transfer
- Frequency of Transfer
- Start and End Period
- Account to transfer money to
Step 4
Eg. If every 1st of the month i want to have $1000 transferred from my salary crediting account to my savings account, below is how it looks like.
Now that you have learned how to track your expenses and automate your savings, the next step will be to look into your insurances and see whether you are sufficiently insured. Stay tuned for our next blog post on insurance as I share what are the things to take note of regarding insurance. What other ways or tools do you use to track your own expenses or automate your savings? Go ahead to comment it here and don't forget to subscribe via email or like our Facebook page for the latest updates! Do also let us know what you would like us to blog about next!
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