As promised, another finance post! Okay so this is something that I learned to do my senior year of college that I got away from this summer.
WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN!
Sound simple?
Kind of.
I LOVE to shop. It's a problem. Not only do I work in a beautiful boutique, but I'm a gifter. If I had the money I would buy presents all of the time. It's very difficult to stay on budget, especially when you let yourself fall into the "ignorance is bliss" mentality of spending.
This will catch up with you eventually, and you will not like it.
I told myself that September I was going to start tracking down everything I spend, but a week into it and I hadn't written down a thing. I had to go through all of my online banking and eventually caught myself up.
It wasn't pretty :/
If I had been writing everything down as I bought it, I can guarantee I would have guilted myself out of buying at least of couple of "must haves."
It's all about being aware of your habits and telling your money where to go instead of the other way around. (For all of you health nuts, this is the same concept as keeping a food diary).
Your spending tracker can be as simple or as complicated as you like. Personally, I have two. One is a notebook that I carry in my purse so I can write down a purchase immediately. The second is a spreadsheet with columns for income, source, spending, source, total income, total spending, and net income (a positive number for the last one is generally a good thing lol).
Take a 30 day challenge and just try it. You might be shocked by what you find out.
Love,
Your fellow shop-a-holic
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