Tracking Monthly Family Expenses: Looking Back

Here is a bar graph showing our family spending in certain target areas that I’ve chosen to focus on for the last 7 months (past budget results). This is exactly the cool stuff I wanted to get when I bought Quicken and Money for comparison a while back, and now I finally have it. Our average monthly spending for each area is also included:

So it looks like we more or less are in line with our planned budget, and that makes me happy. I’m not going to focus aggressively on reducing the areas any further, but I will continue to track our spending. For example, I’m not going to sweat an extra $25 a month on food, we end up saving enough in other areas to cover it. Besides, I like food too much and there are so many good restaurants out there!

I encourage everyone to track their spending, if only to know where it all goes. I’m still using my simplified budgeting process with monthly tallies.