I Stopped Tracking My Expenses!

ctto: google photo

Yep, you read it right. I have stopped tracking my expenses altogether since I get out of debt in 2017. I get tired writing every centavos that I spent in a daily basis and tallying it at the end of the month. It was tedious and painstakingly hard doing the additional step of writing it down. And to be honest I am not consistent.  There were days when I was so tired that I don't even get the chance to write down what and where I had spent my last centavo in my wallet. Later on, I get frustrated with my graph because it is not tally.

Eventually, when I no longer had debts to pay, I quit tracking my day to day expenses. It no longer makes sense to me anymore. Not tracking my daily expenses has been working for me since then and until today. But mind you, I do not disregard the importance of tracking the expenses. It has been a vital part of myself when I was in debt and working my way to a debt-free life. It has helps me identify the unnecessary expenses I should have cut earlier so I would haven't had incurred any debts. It has established me a routine I followed nowadays so I became conscious with consumerism. It is now ingrained in my life that I can now easily determine what is and what not to spend my hard earned money. Talk about the habit I developed through the years.

What Am I Doing Differently Now? On Budgeting

Yet, I would like to let you know that though I no longer track my expenses in every single day, I am still conscious with how I spend my money. This also does not mean that I completely ignore my finances. I BUDGET. There is the difference. I budget the income and allot every centavo to where it should be accounted for. Because I was able to determine the fix expenses such as the monthly rent, electricity, Internet connection, my parents' monthly stipend, office fare, and school fees, I have now a definite (sometimes it varies) amount on each expenditures. The technique is to allot a little over the amount especially for the electricity bill. During summer, we usually have a higher electricity bill due to frequent use of air conditioning unit. I have to anticipate that. Otherwise, these bills are fix every month and therefore is non negotiable.

I prioritize saving and investment too so I have included these two as part of our fix expenditure. I treat them as non negotiable too. (I'll try to come up with a blog for this and how much we are actually saving and investing). The rest of my salary goes to our food and entertainment. This is the biggest variable in our budget. We have grocery money, wet market money, and miscellaneous. Grocery money is pretty straight forward. We've allotted a wet market money because from time to time, we buy the fresh market produce from the wet market rather than in the grocery. It is way cheaper and fresher. The miscellaneous money is either the dining out money or if we suddenly crave for something at home or the entertainment portion to go outdoors or stroll around the nearby park. It works this way because at least it is a guilt-free money.

At the end of each payday, there is something usually left which mostly comes from the entertainment/miscellaneous part. There are weekends we choose to stay at home and just hang around the apartment, thus it saves us with dining out money.
If this happens, I usually put the excess amount in our savings and when there is an opportunity invest it at a higher interest rate. This is what we call the Zero-based budget and it works for us.

Ways to keep me away from too much consumerism

Know that before I have reached this stage, I was once writing my daily expenses in a notebook and had been graphing it on an excel sheet. From there, I had a clearer picture of those unmindful expenses. I cut a lot of shopping and buying. (This was not the easiest part) It took me years to finally be able to identify my wants and needs (easier said before but in reality this is the most difficult part). I could not be able to identify my wants vs my needs because my mindset that time was that I needed all this stuffs. I was focus on consuming goods that ended up in our storage room and never been used for a long time.

 I don't watch tv anymore because the commercial advertisement enticed me to buy more.

I am more aware with Instagram scrolling because I feel envious with the new stuffs and travel features of the celebrities and even some friends. Please, don't judge me here. I just don't want to take self pity because at the moment, I cannot afford all those things. I am happy my friends can travel and has new stuffs but I am still a work in progress with my emotions. At the same time, because I wanted to enjoy the things that I have without keeping up with the Joneses.

Lately, this zero waste management movement is also getting into me. I've been reading a lot about it. The only thing that I can contribute at this time is not filling in the garbage can in as much as possible. Thus, I have been conscious with buying food that were wrap in flashy plastics. Candies, bite size chocolates, biscuits and drinks, I stopped buying it for myself. But remember, I have a 5 year old I am also trying to teach on this so at this time it is not completely zero waste. Hoping that soon, my little family can do more about this zero waste management. So why am I talking about this? This is a guilt free getting rid of consumerism, saving the difference and at the same time contributing to save our dear planet.

Thoughts

One of the things that help me become better (not yet the best) with budget is the use of automation. The automation ensures that I get to save and invest at the same time. When my salary comes in, the money allotted for savings and investment is automatically deducted from it. No fuss.

I think it also helped when we moved to our own solo apartment. Because, back then I saw, I needed more space than stuffs untouched for the longest time. And I have been in the process of getting most of the things we own into selling and donating to free up more space.

My mindset now has also evolved from the old self set who consume goods to a mindful consuming of goods. There are many products out there that advertise improvement of our own selves but for me going back to basics is still the best. Drinking plenty of water. Having a healthy diet. Exercise. Enough sleep. A ray of sunshine and the morning breeze at the beach.

Right now, I am more comfortable with the way I spend my hard earned income. It has some portion which is difficult because we are still living in a single income household and that is my current salary, but fairly improved since the year I started writing in this blog. (The other side hustles goes directly to re-investment)

It is a nice feeling that we are no longer paying debts because the money that should be going there is now part of our savings portfolio. Plus now I can say that I am really in charge with my salary.