Say we already have an income. Let’s say a stable earned income. Now here are the expenses depleting our income. Usually, on our payday we get our salary. Next day, it feels like we don’t have enough budget to go through the next payday again.
In order to get to Cash Heaven, increasing our income is not enough. We should aim for higher savings and investments. We can also achieve higher savings by decreasing (or at least manage) our expenses. Thus, we need to understand and manage our expenses better. Here are the types of expenses we have to keep track of.
1. Home
- Rent
- Mortgage (Home Equity Loans)
- Home Improvements (renovations, furniture, electrical wirings, or anything you pay for your home)
2. Insurance
- Car Insurance
- Health Insurance
- Life Insurance
- Insurance Investments
- Other Risk Management Expenses
3. Children
- All Children Expenses including their education
4. Personal Education
- Tuition Fees
- Books
- School Supplies
- Student Loans
5. Utilities
- Water
- Electricity
- Gas for generating electricity or cooking
- Cleaning maintenance
6. Communication
- Sim Card,
- Mobile Phone,
- Load
- Postpaid Plan
- Wifi
7. Food Groceries
- Food bought from the market or groceries.
8. Transportation
- Car Loans
- Commutes
- Fuel
- Maintenance Expenses
- Parking Fees
9. Eating out / Dating / Networking Expenses
- Food bought in restaurants, coffee shops, milk tea shops, or any eating out shops.
- Cinema Ticket
- Amusement Park Tickets
- Transportation Expenses incurred for the Eating out / Dating / Networking Expenses
10. Hygiene
- Toiletries
- Sanitary Supplies
- Skincare
- Beauty Products
11. Clothing
- laundry expenses such as soap and laundry fee (if any)
- purchase of new clothes.
12. Entertainment
- Netflix
- Cable Expenses
- Spotify
- Game Credits
- Gaming Gears
- Computer Rentals for gaming
13. Health and Wellness
- Medical expenses
- Spa Massage
- Gym membership
- Purchase of gym equipment
- Sports equipment
14. Holidays
- Local Travel
- International Travel
- Hiking
- Beach
15. Gifts
*Include in the Remarks to whom you gave the gift to.
16. Capital Expenses
- Business Venture Capital
- Financial Investment Capital
- Portfolio Capital
- Business Loans
17. Fees & Charges
- Payment for convenience fees such as online payments charges, and commissions
- Delivery Fees
- ATM Withdrawal Charges
- Bank Fees
- Surcharge
- Interest expenses
18. Taxes
- Federal Tax
- State Tax
- Local Tax
- Sales Tax
- Property Tax
19. Miscellaneous
- Other expenses that doesn’t fall on any categories mentioned in the categories above
- Vice expenses such as gambling losses, liquor and cigarettes
In order for us to be able to manage our finances well, we need to track our expenses. We should know our numbers. We can use a small notebook that we can bring anytime to record our expenses every time we buy something. When we buy our coffee, we list it down. We buy our groceries, list them down. At the end of the day or month, we can list them down in excel so we can summarize for us to get better insights. We may use this format to easily gain insight from our data using Pivot.
Listed above are the common personal expenses. If some of your expenses can not be categorized in any of the listed above, feel free to add them on your list.
Please note that I did not included debt/loan payments here as they should be in our Liability accounts.
If you would not want to use paper and pen for tracking your expenses, we can use the power of Google Forms and Google Sheets to easily keep track of our finances. It will also be able to generate summarized informations such as Available Cash, Net Cash Flow and Net Worth with Balance Sheet and Income Statement.
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