Excelling with money

Phillip Edney has a saying that the last parts of blokes to be converted are their right foot (driving) and their wallets. I have to agree. I have wasted a lot of money in my lifetime. My vices were CD's, movies, and fast food.

The biggest step for me in being deliberate with money was not through getting married (though I assume this is where it kicks in with most blokes), but in tracking every dollar I spend. It sounds a bit obsessive, but it really isn't that much work. I just designed an excel spreadsheet that does all the maths for me, and breaks down into what I'm spending on each item each week. Another fancy bit of the document tells me my average spend per week on each item as well as a running total and compares it to my budget.

We plan and budget to spend money on entertainment for the sake of our sanity, even though we can't afford it. That is, we were cutting into our savings this year at college, trusting that we won't be students forever and we'll have more income in 2011.

But money can rule over us in many ways. It's not just in frittering it away, or lusting after more and more stuff, it can also rule us by being too thrifty, or fretting over every cent, or refusing to spend/give money when we need to.

When I first started this tracking (as a student) it was scary embarrassing how much money I would waste. So every dollar I spend goes into my phone and is transferred that night onto the computer. By about November I'm usually sick of it and so I give myself a month or so respite from tracking every dollar. I then delete the old file and start again the next year. We have a budget which acts as a guide and keeps us accountable, but we're not chained to it. I delete the file each year because I don't want to spend my life worrying about money or comparing it year on year.