Using your ledger

After you have kept a spending log for 30 days, you will know what you routinely spend your money on. If during this period you have not thought back over the last year or so to consider what you spend occasionally or seasonally, now would be the time to do so. —Get an idea about how much money you devote to gifts, vacations, holiday entertaining, etc.

You should also know all your sources of income and how much they yield. Some people don’t receive a regular pay check. You may work on commission or be self- employed. I will address issue associated with those specific circumstances in a future blog. Right now, I want to work give you your “workbook.”

You are now going to start using you ledger as it was really intended to be used. Start making your entries in categories, not just a list. Your ledger would look something like this:

I recommend a ledger that has at least 10 columns and 31 rows—so you can see all your figures for a whole month. If 10 columns are not enough for all your categories, then you could get a larger ledger, one with more columns (or use two pages).

Write in your categories in the spaces across the top, saving the last column for daily totals. You will use a new row each day (corresponding to the day’s date) to enter your figures.

Your categories organize your records. You want all the money you spend on entertainment in one category. Food related expenditures will go in another. This means you have to make some judgment calls. For example, will the money you spend eating out go under “Food” or “Entertainment” or “Eating Out?” Some people put car payments, fuel, repairs, etc in the category of “Transportation;” others prefer to have a category column for each of those. Here’s a puzzle: I you have a car and decide to ride the bus one day. Do you need a “Bus Fare” category? Probably not. — “Miscellaneous” is a good name for one category. (But you will not want too many expenditures to end up in this column!) We all need to customize the categories to reflect our particular lifestyle, so one person’s may vary somewhat from another’s.