Journey to 90 million: January 2014 Expenditure Tracker

Changing the way you report and track things is always a rather big decision because you no longer have the benefit of going back and comparing what you did in previous years. My expenditure tracker posts have been running for exactly 2 years now and they have largely been in the same format - i.e. how much am I saving towards my home loan, how much am I investing in shares and how much am I spending on personal expenses.

In my 2014 financial goals, however, I mentioned that this year will be a 'no savings' year where I am going to try and achieve all those things which I have been putting off for a very long time. Given that I am typically an over-saver rather than an over-spender this is not a bad thing, however it does make my previous expenditure trackers quite pointless.

So why continue with the expenditure tracker at all?

Quite simply because I have a budget. Actually it is a rather tight budget. Even though I am not saving much this year (for the long term) I am trying to get a lot done. Have a look at my 2014 financial goals and you'll see that to achieve some of them I actually need to sell some of my automatic share investments. This means I am tracking what I am spending much more closely than in the past.

How am I tracking my expenses now?

Although I'm not going to provide the details (because it would bore everyone) I have set up a spreadsheet where I track every dollar I spend. I update this daily (takes about 2 minutes) and there are 7 top level categories and 38 sub categories which I can fill the details into.

For the purpose of this post every month I will provide details on the top level categories. Some expenses (such as home set up costs for my new apartment) are very lumpy. The new expenditure tracker sheet that I have allows me to see when I'm actually behind (according to my goals) and when it is just a lumpy month.

January 2014 Expenditure Tracker - Updated Version

Item	Jan 2014	Monthly Target	Perf. vs Target
Accommodation / Living expenses	$4,297	$2,246	+$2,052
Car expenses	$1368.9	$692	+$677
Health / Well being expenses	$399	$566	-$167
Entertainment / Personal expenses	$1,452	$1,230	+$222
Travel expenses	$429	$675	-$246
Other 'big' expenses	$1,900	$3,508	-$1,608
Savings / Investments	-$2,840	$1,051	-$3,891

The sea of red may look terrible above but
I'm actually not disappointed at all with this month. Some very quick comments by category

Accommodation / Living expenses were much higher due to my apartment set up cost. I had budgeted for this and currently have more than $900 left of my budget to set up the apartment. I also had to pay contents insurance this month. My grocery bill was far less than expected because I was using free gift cards from my credit card points
Car expenses were higher because my insurance was due this month
Health and well being benefited because I pre-paid some bills (related to hobbies)
Entertainment / Personal expenses were the one area I was unhappy with. Nights out are still really busting the budget (+$300 this month)
Travel was well below budget - this will reverse as soon as I start having to book things for my big overseas trip later this year
'Other' is a strange category - it is big things I am saving for like my car and an engagement ring among others. I want this to be as 'high' as possible because it is technically a savings category. I was lower than expected on this because of the high expenses in other categories
Savings / Investments like 'other' I would like to be as high as possible. It is a negative number because I sold down some stock and used this to fund some of my expenses. I had budgeted and planned for this so it is not concerning to me.