Keeping Track of Your Money

Keeping Track of Your Money
A Modern Problem Needs a Modern Solution

This section of the More Money for Midlife Women Programme deals with keeping track of the money you do have coming to you now. In a later section, we will look at ways of increasing the money flowing towards you.

How often do you hear people say?
I don’t have any money
I don’t have enough money
I don’t know where my money goes
I can barely afford to live
Worse still – do you sometimes hear yourself saying any of the above?

Please don’t for two reasons
First, these are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you say them about yourself, you make them come true for you.

Second, they are not objectively true.  People living on benefits do have money, and even a beggar on the street has a money flow.

However little money you have flowing towards you, you still have choices about what you do with it? Those choices govern the outcomes in your life.

This section of the More Money for Midlife Women Programme deals with keeping track of the money you do have coming to you now. In a later section, we will look at ways of increasing the money flowing towards you.

These days banks, other financial institutions, and governments too, make it increasingly difficult for us to keep track of money.

Invisible Money
1. One thing is money has become invisible. You may have elderly relatives who will tell you their parents used to manage their money in envelopes on the mantelpiece. They would put money into separate envelopes for rent, utilities, clothes and even holidays.

This was a relatively simple because people were paid in cash by the week. Cash was visible and tangible and when it was gone there was no more.

Money flows have been made more complicated. Money is now normally paid by Bank transfer and most people have been pushed to accept being paid by the month which means you have to manage your money flows over a longer period.

Available Credit
2 The other factor which has complicated money is that Credit is available to most people very easily. Credit Cards mean that you don’t need to think if you can afford something at the time you purchase since you wont need to pay for weeks or months ahead. And then you won’t have to pay it all if you choose not to.

We get monthly credit card statements in the post or online at a time in the month that suits the Credit Card company which rarely coincides with your payment time in a month which makes it even more difficult to know where you stand.

A Modern Problem Needs a Modern Solution

So to match the complexity of the modern money system a more modern method than envelopes on the mantelpiece.

A friend of mine called Sue Weighell of Delta Solutions has developed a Money Tracker using the Excell Platform. It is bright, colourful and easy to use.

The challenge you may have with it is that it requires some time, maybe a morning or afternoon of concentrated attention. You will find it easier if you can recruit a friend to help you work through it. Maybe you can agree that you will do the same for her.

You will need access to your bank statements, credit cards and cash cards for the last three months. They may be on paper or online or a mix of the two.

Sue has provided basic instructions in the programme, but may I make a few additions?

Although the form begins with Income I suggest you don’t spend much time on that to start with. We will be dealing with increasing your income in another section of the programme.

The main value of the Tracker is finding out what happened to your money flow over the last three months and then projecting that forward to a budget for the future.

As you go through your records you will find most items repeat monthly, but some will be quarterly or annual and others may be weekly. Never mind Sue’s clever form will convert all of them into a Monthly and Annual equivalent.

The first time you do this exercise you will find some surprises about what is happening to your money. All of these can be modified for your future budget.

You will definitely find doing this exercise easier if you have someone there to help you. And as I said it would be even better if you have someone for whom you will return the favour. However, if you don’t have anyone available don’t let that be an excuse to delay.

This exercise needs definite strong intention because nearly all of us don’t want to face up to doing it. As a friend of mind would say this is a ‘Conversation you need to have’. In this case, it is with yourself.

However it will be worth it and whatever you find out, you will have a huge win of satisfaction from having done it.

Below is the link to the Money Tracker  Good Luck.