Keep an Eye on Your Spending

I have written posts previously about the importance of tracking your expenses. If you are married or in a relationship it is also important to make sure you are communicating with each other about your finances.

Saturday night on the show, Til Debt Do Us Part, the couple were spending twice their monthly income each month without realizing it. On other shows there have been couples who had a considerable higher amount of debt than they thought. Some wonder how they can spend that much over their income and not realize. But if you have credit card debt it is easy to keep adding to it without realizing.

Also, by tracking your expenses, you can see what you spend your money on. As demonstrated on the show and others, when you don’t track your spending cash can disappear from your wallet without realizing what you spent it on.

It may seem like a lot of work, once you get in the habit of tracking your spending it will become easier. You can use an Excel worksheet or there are software programs such as Quicken or Mint. I haven’t personally used Mint, but have friends who have and was surprised to see how easy it was to save money when you can see where it is going.