Last month, I challenged readers to predict their spending for the month of November, track it, and then come back and see how well their predictions went. Over 60 people completed my online Google spreadsheet survey, and an unknown amount of people did it manually via paper. It’s all anonymous so hopefully that makes it easy to be honest.

Well, I finally went back and recategorized my own expenses in Mint, and here are the results that I can share. The first two columns are the average and median of all the online responses. This is just for kicks, it really doesn’t show much valuable data. The third and fourth columns are my own household predictions and final spending tallies.

The real goal of this post was to motivate some of you readers to track your spending and see if you found any surprises. Budgeting every month is hard, but just tracking your spending for a single month can point out problem areas to target. If you missed it last month, you can just download the PDF version and do it this month or any time. Some thoughts on our own spending:

• Predicting housing costs is probably not very useful, as for most people this doesn’t change much from month-to-month.
• Food continues to be our weak spot, both groceries and dining out, although for the most part we spend a lot on food and we choose to do so. We’re trying to buy more fresh vegetables and such, and need to work on planning ahead of time so we don’t buy stuff at “retail” prices at the supermarket for our recipes.
• Gas is another area that probably stays relatively constant from month-to-month, it’s hard to separate the noise from actual gas-saving efforts like driving less or with less vigor. We actually usually spend less than this in most months. We have no car payments.
• I broke down Personal as “health insurance, medical expenses, clothing, personal care, entertainment, etc.” Our health insurance premiums are covered by work, but we’ve had several visits recently where the copays have been adding up as well as other things. We also bought more clothes than usual this month.
• Regarding the total number, another factor here is that we bought most of our holiday gifts in November. I read somewhere that the average household spends about $1,000 during the holidays in general, with $700 going towards gifts. We’re pretty close to that, and our rough budget was $1,000 towards gifts for the family and friends.

In the end, I think when it comes to overall spending, it’s best to concentrate on the recurring big stuff – housing, food, transportation. This takes preplanning and structural changes such as getting a roommate, moving closer to work and getting rid of a car, or downsizing the living space. However, in month-to-month budgets, it’s often those forgotten and occasional expenses and sneak up and bite us. Things like holiday gifts, doctor’s bills, car repairs, birthdays and weddings for other people, and so on.

How’d you do?

Even though I’m really into personal finance, I hardly ever do a monthly budget. However, I do think a common problem out there is that folks spend more than they think they do. Often this is just in one “problem area” such as groceries, dining out, clothes shopping, or online purchases. Therefore, I propose an experiment where everyone tracks their budgets for just one month. (If you already track your spending religiously, skip this post.) It’s October 31st, so how about November?

I’m doing this myself for November, and I hope you’ll join me. The experiment is quite simple. Here is the overall picture, followed by details.

1. Before the start of the month, write down what you think you will spend that month.
2. During the month, track your spending.
3. At the end of the month, compare your prediction and actual spending results. What was different? Why?

Start of the Month

Without checking any other sources, just use your gut and write down how much you think you’ll spend for the month. Break it down into categories like housing, food, debt, transportation, utilities, and so on. If you’d like to participate in a group project, I’ve created this simple Google Docs form that you can fill out your predictions, and I can report on overall numbers later one. Unfortunately, the form won’t e-mail you a copy of your inputs, but you can record your prediction by printing out this PDF version or use this text file and save it on your computer.

During the Month

If you do the majority of your spending via online billpay, debit cards, and credit cards, then the easiest way to track your spending is with a online money management site like Mint.com (owned by Intuit) or one of the many flavors of Yodlee out there (Fidelity FullView, Bank of America MyPortfolio, etc). You just enter your login information, and it pulls all your transactions for you. Categorization gets better the more you use it.

Alternatively, you can keep track using pencil and paper, enter expenses into a smartphone app, or use desktop software like Intuit Quicken or iBank for Mac. You could also just wait until the end of the month and tally up your statements, but then this task might become a bit daunting. It’s probably best to keep up with it at least weekly. I plan on using Mint because it’s already learned most of my categories, and it also has a mobile app that lets you enter cash transactions.

End of the Month

The moment of truth arrives. In what areas did you overspend? I’m hoping to get at least 100 readers to fill out this predicted spending survey and then follow-up with an actual spending survey to see how it went. I’ve already entered my numbers and don’t worry, it’s all anonymous. How well do you really know your own spending?

Ah, budgeting. New year, same old goals? While I’m not one of those people that think everyone needs a detailed budget, I do think everyone should track their spending at least once a year or so. This way, you have a real snapshot of where your money is going (which may just surprise you). Writing down every little transaction on a piece of paper or even tapping it into your smartphone can get really tedious. So here’s what I do to manage it in 15-minutes a year.

Put All Your Spending On A Credit/Debit Card

The main idea is to put all your spending in an electronic format so that a bank keeps track of all your purchases for you instead of little slips of paper. If you don’t like credit cards, use a debit card. But credit cards offer superior consumer protection features, so I prefer them. You don’t need to put it all on one card, but it does make things simpler.

Now, do this for a month, and avoid paying cash whenever possible. Don’t change your spending behavior, and there is no need to record anything.

Sign Up For Mint.com

Next, you should sign up for the online aggregator tool Mint.com. I also like versions of Yodlee, but it looks like their development has slowed significantly. To start, all you need is your e-mail address and the login details for your credit card website.

I know that many people are wary about giving out their login credentials, but in my opinion your credit card login is not as sensitive as say, a bank login. Credit card companies make so much money that they are happy to refund any fraudulent charges immediately. It is in their interest to make you feel very safe about using credit cards.

Anyhow, Mint has improved their back-end system so that most credit card information syncs up fairly quickly. Click on the “Transactions” tab on the top of the page, and you should see all your recent purchases. You can wait until after a month of spending on the card, because Mint should upload all your historical transactions within the last few months.

Categorize Transactions

Without any input from you, Mint will have tried their best guess for the Category of each of your purchases. They’ve gotten better, but there will likely still be a few that are incorrectly categorized or simply left labeled as “Uncategorized”. In addition, some of your purchases from a megastore like Walmart/Target/Costco might be “groceries” or it might be “electronics”.

Use the the pull-down menus and spend a little time “teaching” Mint the proper categories that you prefer. If you want all future CVS purchases to be under “Groceries” instead of “Pharmacy”, you can click on Details and make a rule that will do that for you automatically. This saves lots of time in the future.

Finally, if you have certain transactions that you wish to have Mint ignore in your budget calculations, use the “Exclude from Mint” category.

Pretty Pie Charts!

After all your transactions look nice, click on the “Trends” tab on top, and check out some pretty pie charts created from your spending history. The charts are very interactive, click around and drill down into your data. You might need to go back and re-label some expenses to get everything to sort nicely.

Now you should have a clearer idea of where your money goes. If you have bills that you had to pay by bank account, you’ll want to account for those separately if you don’t want to sync it up with Mint. If you make some small cash purchases, just track your ATM withdrawals. I just made a rule that labeled all ATM withdrawals “Dining Out”, since that’s usually where it goes.

I was in a discussion about budgeting and eventually decided that there are two primary types of budgeting by households. I called them “bottom-up” and “top-down”. However, there are some differing definitions of these terms floating around, mostly in connection with businesses or governments. So first, some quick definitions:

Bottom-Up Budgeting is focusing on your spending and trying to manage each one. You keep track of your spending, either item-by-item with lists or by category using software like Quicken or Mint.com. You look at each expense somewhat holistically and decide consciously if you need to cut back or if you are happy with the amount being spent. Whatever is left, is put into savings.

Top-Down Budgeting is the simpler, big-picture type of budgeting. You decide how much you want to save from your income, either by percent or total amount. Examples: I want to save 10% of my take-home pay. I want to save $1,000 a month. After you figure how much you want to save, you just try to set that aside, and spend the rest however you like.

Alternatively, you might say “I want to spend $3,000 a month total.” I still consider this top-down budgeting if you are not looking at each expense separately each month. The focus is still basically saving some fixed amount for the future.

Share! Vote in my poll…

What method of budgeting do you prefer?

• Bottom-up budgeting, focusing on expenses
• Top-down budgeting, focusing on overall savings rate
• Neither, or a mix of both.
• I don't need no stinkin' budget.

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