Create your own expense ledger

[IhrkeGirl]

Both my husband and I balance the ledgers in our house. Right now I'm working on making an Excel book for our monthly expenses; and since James, my husband, is an absolute genius with Excel he is going to connect all of my sheets together ( I have one for each month) so that all of the totals show up on the main page and we can see how much we spend each month. The main page shows summaries of each month and basically after December the whole years spendings. Each sheet after the main sheet is renamed for whichever month so that I can create more itemized lists like for Food i can itemize how much meat, veggies, fruit, junk food, and milk i buy. Basically i'm creating my own ledger besides the checkbook because we pay most of our bills online or have them taken automatically out of our account.

The only downfall is that i have to put down other items that don't really create expenses each month like repairs or maintenance for vehicles, purchasing appliances, appliance parts, repairs, and other such one time expenses. it is really helpful, when i first started I wanted to make it really detailed by listing all the fruits we buy but that would have meant constant upkeep with my excel book, so instead I made Food/Drink a catagory and the sub catagories are the main food groups plus extras like desserts, canned foods, Junk food, prepackaged sauces/dressings, spices. I've made lots of different categories like House Care; subcategories are cleaning supplies, laundry, and fabrics. For fabrics it could mean towels, washclothes, actual fabric for making things if thats what you liked. Here are all of the categories I've made so far and their subcategories. Feel free to tell me if I've missed anything or how I can downsize the list, it would be extremely helpful. I've been trying for a couple of days to try to remember everything without getting too extremely detailed. The list is below.

One last thing that i did was make Tax its own category since i'm itemizing everything it leaves state taxes out if you have to deal with them. Then I make a category just for our household income and my husband is very good at turning excel books into ledgers so that everything we purchase comes up as a negative and each income we put into it comes as a positive. Under the income category you can put a miscellaneous subcategory and if one does extra jobs around the neighborhood you can put that income in that category, or your tax returns. Its also a good idea to put down medical coupons, WIC, food stamps, basically Government assistance; as in income. It's important that you put whatever you get with food stamps on your ledger and at the same time put that exact same amount into the food stamps area. For example if you use EBT food stamps, say 10.86 on junk food and 1.86 of that was tax; put the 1.86 in the tax box for that day, put the 9 dollars into the junk food box for that day. and in the Food stamps income box for that day put the total 10.86 since food stamps can't be put into your bank account. This way they balance out and would equal 0 in your ledger if that was the only thing in there. Its the same if you get a medical coupon or insurance that pays for prescriptions, or WIC. Then you can see how much you spend on items for when you are no longer eligible for certain government programs like WIC, or TANF, or medical coupons if you're pregnant. You will be able to save up just in case and see how much money you saved that month, how much you dipped into savings, and if you give allowances for your kids you can see how much you're paying them total each month. I think that something like this has a lot of potential if people experiment with it on their own. I just like being able to see where my money goes in some amount of detail.

Appliances/Utensils;electronic appliances, cookware, flatware, silverware, tupperware, repairs, maintenance, parts

Entertainment/Multimedia; CD's, DVD's, video games, family games(meaning anything not on the computer, console, or handheld device), other (just incase i find something that doesn't fit)

Bills; I listed the names of all the companies we receive bills from

Food/Drink; baby food, baking goods, breads/pasta, breakfast, candy/junk food, canned/boxed, dairy, desserts, drinks(anything not milk), frozen foods, fruits, meats, spices, vegetables, eating out

Health/beauty; cosmetics, medication, vitamins, toiletries

House care; cleaning supplies, laundry, fabrics

Personal care; baby clothes, my clothes, husbands clothes

travel; gas, hotel, dining, extra(for anything purchased not eligible for the first three subcategories)

Vehicles; purchase(for any vehicle purchase), gas, maintenance/repairs, tabs