What I have learned while tracking expenses?

October 30, 2022

Living within your means is easy to say yet difficult to follow but with perseverance and discipline still we can.

_{Photo from Unsplash by Sincerely Media}

Time flies so fast and we are now in the last two days of October. On the next day we will be in the first day of November,a new month, a second to the last month of the year and most people will celebrate Halloween. Next is December and yes Christmas is coming.

I participated in the blogging contest of @hiveph community about financial literacy and financial education. I just felt sad that only few were joined. In my part, I was happy that I really pursued in joining it not just for a contest but because I really learned from it.

For the last week's topic here it is:

4th Week: A Reflection on Implementing Your Budget Plan and Summary of the Data you gathered for the past 30 days.

My reflection

Living within our means is easy to say but difficult to follow.

It sounds fun because in my previous article Live within your means I encourage everyone to do it but yes many commented that it is so difficult to live with it nowadays because price of most goods are increasing.

In myself, I really tried hard to live within our means but after seeing the summary of the data I've gathered I've noticed that our expenses is more than my husband's salary or income. (I will show the summary of the data I gathered below.)

Despite of that, I never tried to borrow money from anyone so I won't have any debt. I know that having debt will add another problem in budgeting. But instead, I use some of the savings that we have.

Allowance took a lot of the budget.

Foods aside from rice and groceries are included in our allowance expenses. When we bought fruits, vegetables and fish it will be from the allowance budget and this will becomes short most of the times. Fare, food for merienda also comes from it. Oh food! there were times that we cannot say no to foods especially when we are hungry, especially when your son ask for something and he badly need it.

Add additional budget for family members and friends.

There were times that family or friends will visit and off course you need to provide food for them. There were times that our young people would ask we have something to eat because they felt so hungry and we need to help or give food to those hungry people. We will bring them to our house and offer simple food to them. Sometimes we will invite my sister in law and his family to drop by for a simple dinner. Though we don't need to offer rich foods but still it will consume food. Sometimes we can cookthe food which is budgeted for days or weeks. So, always have savings or extra budget for it.

When tracking your expenses, always let your partner know.

My husband knew that I am busy with my cellphone, he knew that I am writing for a blog even he doesn't understand it well. When I join this challenge, he didn't know that I am tracking our expenses from the budgeted money. One day, I told him to buy vegetables and when he got home, I asked the prices of every vegetables. At first he answered in one item, then I asked again for another until he became annoyed, lol. He felt that I am looking for every coin he spent, lol and then I just asked how much he spent for all of it, lol. So, better let them know, lol.

Tracking expenses is a big help in budgeting

I already mentioned it inmy previous article about this challenge but I want to write it again. Tracking our expenses will help us know where every peso goes. It will help us decide how much budget we would allocate for a specific need. On the otherhand, it will also shows us what thing cost us a lot and for sure we have a lot of expenses in food.

Temperance and self discipline is needed to follow the budget.

Surely we can't follow our budget if we don't have temperance in food, shopping (like shoppee?) and other things that we love most. It is good to have a principle of food is life but sometimes temperance is necessary too. Self discipline is also needed in all aspects.

Small income, small budget

This is the reality, if we have small income, of course we have a small budget at sometimes our income is really not enough to supply our needs. The minimum or below minim wage earner suffer from this problem. I always pray that God will provide our needs despite of a small income. This is also the reason why we need extra income. This is also the reason that I am trying to find side hustles and hoping to help my husband financially.

Those are the reflection I have all throughout the month after joining this challenge.

Summary of the data gathered

Since I only track my husband's salary for this month as our main source of income, here it is.

Might be his net salary is so small compared to yours but we are grateful having it. We are thankful because for sure others have lesser than it. So, we need to be thankful for whatever we have.

Here is also our expenses for the month. Some expenses that being payed by our side hustles income is not included in here like for example our LPG and load which is being paid by my income in load retailing.

Plan to track our expenses as a family

I am planning to track our expenses, including my husband's expenses this following month but I don't know of he will cooperate with me. I know most men are not fond of it, will you agree men?

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Thank you so much for taking time to read this blog.