Good points, both. I suppose it’s more of a ‘where is ALL of the money going’ kind of thing.

That’s what I’m doing. I, too, am chipping away at the debt, awaiting the day that I don’t HAVE to send that money out on past purchases, but can save (or spend) it for something else!

Thanks again for doing this, Mrs. Micah. We appreciate it!

It may not cast the same illumination on your spending habits, but I think it’s useful to track just to get a fuller financial picture.

I’m tracking everything, including car note, electric bill, retirement that comes out of checking acct, credit card payments (even though we “technically” spent it last month) etc… This is my first time to ever track my expenses so I want to know exactly how much we spent this month. My reasoning, is I added up our gross pay and I am wondering where all our money is going!!!

The only thing I am not currently including is what we are charging on the credit card currently. I think over time, I will get to where I will add what we charge daily and not include the amount we pay monthly. (I only use mine for gas and online purchases, which is not that often, where as my husband uses his for everything instead of using his debit card–we do pay the balance off every month though.

I guess it depends……..

I do have a question for the masses, though: when tracking ’spending,’ do you include credit card and other debt payment?

At first, I didn’t (it’s on my budget spreadsheet, and is included there, but I wasn’t including it on the February ’spending’ document and blog), but yesterday, I decided to add it, so we’d know EVERY penny that went out.

I wonder about it, though, because it’s money that’s already been ’spent,’ sort of, but it’s not FOR anything.