Last December, I started tracking my expenses, purely because I really needed to know what I was spending on each month so that I can adjust my budget if I need to.

It was a fruitful exercise. To my surprise, I discovered that my average monthly spend was about RM2500. It was very encouraging, easing the vague background anxiety I was feeling that I was spending way too much, especially on food. I was also liking the clarity I had at the end of each month about my financial situation.

But I really hated tracking every sen I spent.

I loved the Money Lover app well enough. I will easily recommend it because not only did they make it easy for me to record my expenses, it provided beautiful reports to impress people with.

However, keying stuff into my itty bitty phone each time I buy something was such a tedious exercise! So, I decided to pay for as many things as I could, especially food and groceries, with my debit or credit card so that I can have a digital record of what I spend. I keyed in only cash expenses.

That helped a lot, but it also exposed me to the danger of spending too much on food. There’s no denying the fact that I tend to be more conscious of what I spend when I use cash. There’s something about spending with plastic — you tend to get more free with your money.

But even this sputtered out because the months of April onwards were hectic for me, with May being my worst month due to being laid low with bad neck and shoulder pain. (And also from the mental overwhelm from the chaos around getting my AstraZeneca vaccination and later, the LRT Kelana Jaya accident.)

When the legs of your life give out, you shouldn’t push yourself even harder to live up to an ideal. So, because tracking my expenses was just too much work on top of everything I was going through, and to prevent myself from pushing towards burnout territory, I shaved it off my activity list.

Tracking expenses: Making it a sustainable habit

Most personal finance bloggers will tell you that it is a very good idea to track your expenses. Many of them proudly showcase spreadsheets and pie charts every month to highlight their finances each month. I suspect that for a lot of them, this is a fun activity.

Well, yeah, it’s not fun for me. The idea of tabulating my money each month is akin to doing my taxes every month. Yipee.

Also, thinking about money all the dang time was feeding into my angst surrounding my finances.

Still, I grudgingly admit that I have been benefiting greatly from the exercise. Tracking your finances will:

• Force you to regularly review your finances,
• Which in turn will give you clarity about where you stand financially
• Allow you to tweak your budget to ensure that you are on track with your financial goals and to reorient if you are going off course

If you’re the type that enjoy Excel sheets and pie charts, tracking your expenses will be a joy. But I suspect many people are like me – we find this exercise a drudgery, and in a world of many responsibilities and distractions, this will be a tough habit to keep.

So where does that leave us folks who just don’t enjoy the process? Here’s what I will do, moving forward, to make it a more sustainable practice:

Acceptance

I’m just going to accept the fact that I’m one of those folks who won’t be very consistent with tracking my expenses monthly. There will be some months where I’ll go all in. There will be some months where life overwhelms me and I just put this aside. I’m not going to be perfectionist when it comes to this area of my financial life, so if you’re like me, don’t kick yourself if you miss a month or three.

Pay yourself first, spend later

I’ve always practiced the habit of shuttling money first into a savings account when I receive my paycheck. Now I automate the process by transferring the money to savings and investment accounts. That way I don’t have to worry about overspending.

Automate bill payments

Likewise, I have been automating as many bills as I can through my online bank account.

Continue using credit cards but with care

One way to manage is to review the credit card expenditure every week to ensure I’m not overspending. Wish me luck!

Weekly limit

Instead of tracking every single sen, I will give myself a set amount to spend on takeout food/dining out (my most troublesome expenditure) every week. I’ll set mine to RM120, which will give me an expenditure of RM480 a month.

Limit the number of times I get food deliveries

My current weakness is GrabFood and FoodPanda meals. Due to MCO3.0 (lockdown) I find myself ordering deliveries more instead of picking up takeout like I usually do. And, alas, a lot of delivery meals are expensive.

My brother and I have taken to ordering our meals together to save on delivery charges. He orders almost every meal. I usually don’t. However, ever since starting this collaboration of sorts, I found it challenging to say no to his casual, “So what do you wanna order today?” So I will limit my takeout days to only five orders per week.

Final words

I will continue to write monthly expense reports, but I’m definitely going to make it less granular and detailed.

I suppose at the end of the day, while it is highly beneficial to track your expenses, it is not something you should beat yourself over with if you can’t be a tracking superstar. The trick is to make sure our financial practices are sustainable and not a huge chore so that you’ll keep doing it.

How about you – do you track expenses?