Quote:
Originally Posted by MiddleAgedAl
Got a copy of excel or some other spreadsheet that you know how to use ?
Got a bank account and/or credit card that allows access to transactions via a web browser?
Log-on, do an inquiry into past transactions. Some of the better tools (especially with visa) will even tag your purchases with a category based on the retailer (computer guesses, but it can be really accurate).
Cut n paste your bank account and credit card transactions for the past 6 mos into a spreadsheet.
Use excel to group by category, and get totals for the past 6 mos.
This will show you where your money is really going, not where you sorta think it's been going (assuming you dont pay cash for a lot of stuff, this ain't 1980 after all).
This can be a very revealing & suprising thing to do, you wont believe where your money goes sometimes.
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Thanks for that al.
I just did the calculations by grouping in excel and here's my break down. I am a college kid that doesn't earn much monthly to monthly basis and i pay for most of my stuff, so the percentige SHOULD be off compared to MOST of you guys
Here's the breakdown of all the money that went out of my account within the last 18 months.
~29% of all my earnings went to Gas/Transportation
~26% went to eating out/entertainment
~15% went to insurance/cell phone bill
Rest were miscellaneous items.
Moral of the story. Stop driving less to go places, that usually means eating out.
Or buy a prius and stop eating out so much.
FML.