You need to track your expenses and here's how to do it

Managing your finances can be difficult, but a few quality tips and tricks can go a long way. Each week we'll be featuring a new tip on anything from daily spending to retirement planning from a member of the Finance Collective. This week's tip comes from The Budget Boy is about an easy way to tracking your expenses:

"There are many free apps available to help you track expenses, but I always prefer using my own spreadsheets. That enables me to have the most control over what I'm doing. I understand that being able to access your spreadsheet on your phone makes tracking significantly easier, which is why I prefer Google Sheets over Excel. You can download the Google Sheets app and pull up your expense tracker wherever you are to input a transaction or monitor your spending. By combining the expense tracker as separate tabs within the same spreadsheet as the bill tracker, you can have all your finances in one easy-to-access location.

It helps to choose a specific time each day where you record all your transactions while they are still fresh in your mind. It only takes a few minutes. You might do it right before you go to sleep. Or you might do it before you leave in the morning. If you use credit cards responsibly, I advocate using credit cards for all transactions possible to accumulate rewards points but also to make tracking easier. Cash transactions can easily be forgotten while credit card transaction are posted in your account. It's easy to log in once a day and copy over the amounts." -The Budget Boy

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