There are many benefits to tracking where all of your money goes. By this, I don’t mean just keeping track of your bills, but actually keep track of nearly everything you spend your money on. This includes that soda pop you bought from the vending machine to the candy bar you bought on break.

The first and most obvious benefit of this is that you can look at the records and see exactly what you are spending your money on and also how much you are really spending on things that you don’t really think about (small purchases like the candy bar) as being a major expense. At the end of the month, you can add all these purchases together and see how much you are actually spending on these things.

The other benefit to this is that if you are forcing yourself to track every purchase, you will be less likely to make these needless purchases. Subconsciously, you will not want to have to go through the extra effort of writing down these purchases on your log and you will therefore opt to refill an empty bottle with water rather than buying a soda or buying a new bottle of water. This second benefit will save you money so that you have more left over at the end of the month.

With just these two benefits in mind, I challenge you to track all of your incomes and expenses for a month and then at the end of the month look at what you spent money on and think of any money that you didn’t spend that you otherwise might have or if you have more money left over at the end of the month than you normally would. Let me know how it goes.