Finance Basics - Lesson 5

How is the spending log coming along?  Have you tried the calendar out yet?

Here are a few tips:

Start with making a working copy of your own.  Since you have viewing privileges, you will probably need to download the pages given last week to your Google Drive.  You may need to click on the Make A Copy option.

From there, you will want to save the original sheet and duplicate it to do your work on.  Rename the tabs at the bottom for the duplicates, I listed them by month.

From there, you will want to start typing!

Color coding based on whether the transaction is a deposit (meaning it has a + in the + or - column).  Deposits are where money is added to the account.  The transactions with a - in the column will be charges against the account.  For me, some of the charges were direct transactions at stores, while others were online or on an automatic deduction.

Once you are done, you can then use the space on the side to look at the categories of the spending transactions to see where cutting the fat out of the monthly spending can be done.

This is what I came up with for my copy:

I then filled out the calendar for the (R)egular expenses (those are mostly utility expenses that are paid monthly and will not end once all debt is paid) and I used the same color codes on the calendar to keep it consistent.

Keep going, you're doing great!