What's your typical spending in a day?

To figure out what your typical day looks like, you will need to track your expenses.

If you're not sure what your typical day looks like, or how to track your expenses here are a couple of ways to figure it out:

• save all of your receipts for the day, week, month
• total them up on a regular basis to see how much you've spent
• consider what you were spending for -- need or want

Another way is:

• to carry a little booklet (one of those small spiral notebooks) that will fit in your pocket and every time you are spending money on something write it down in your booklet
• you can add the date, time and some experts advise writing how you were feeling as well
• their thinking is that you may be able to see patterns in your spending and eventually  you will be able to make some changes once you are aware of what you are spending

All you really need is:

• a piece of paper and
• a pencil 
• write down everything you spent for the day.

There are many types of expenses to consider:

• Some expenses are the same every month and are known as fixed expenses.
• Other expenses vary throughout the year or are only paid at certain times of the year. These expenses are called variable expenses and can be a little harder to keep track of because they're not being dealt with on a regular basis.
• It's much easier to forget about a variable expense.
• Then there are those "do not pay until" expenses. It's really easy to forget about these if you're not organized.  

Sometime during the day which could be:

• after dinner,
• first thing in the morning,
• before going to bed,
• whatever time of day works best for you,
• total what you have spent for that day.

Try to do this everyday, or every week, or every month until you get a handle on your spending.

Once you've been able to master tracking your expenses you will be ready for the next step in Budgeting.