I have been telling myself this for ages – Just. Get. Started!
So I decided to sign up and start a blog to document my thoughts and my journey through frugality to become financially independent (FI). It is also about me being accountable, and hopefully hearing from others who are on this road – that is why I have decided to share this rather than keeping it all squirrelled away privately somewhere.
Today, I am not super-concerned with making this first post a thing of beauty but it’s the lever to get the ball rolling.
I have been reading and listening to several books on Kindle and Audible and saving money, investing, retiring early, and becoming FI and most of the time the basis for it all is “look after your money”.
This makes sense to me as to how can one become FI if they are spending all they earn, or worse, spending more than they earn.
To take the first steps to a better, happier life it seems key that I have an understanding of what money is coming in and where it is going. To this end, I think the first thing to do is to start tracking the expenses.
The good thing is that I have been recording my expenses, as best I could given that I’ve got a family who doesn’t necessarily share the same view as me, for about three years. This process has improved over time and I have recently added a few more categories to help identify more preciously what has been spent.
I’ll share the concept later on and when I’ve carried out a bit of analysis on the data, I’ll also share the results so you’ll be able to get a feel for what I’m doing.
It would be great if you could share in the comments below how you track your expenses!
I will add more as I can about my circumstances, both financial and personal, and there may also be other topics that creep into this blog such as my efforts to learn a foreign language or my fitness life.
The last thing I want to say right now is thanks for stopping by and reading this. Please do take a moment to comment below, it would be great to hear from like-minded people! 🙂
Welcome to WordPress! We track our expenses in Quicken and have been using it since it first came out about 20 years ago. We also use a spreadsheet program for tracking savings and net worth.
Hey Jen!
Thanks for the welcome 😀
I’ve heard of Quicken but never taken a look at it before but will check it out. Currently using Numbers for recording my expenses but one drawback to that is the time required to stay on top of it.
Thanks for stopping by, I’ll be sure to pop over and check out your blog too 👍
Hello
Congrats on starting the blog – good luck with it and all the best with your FI journey!
I used to track my expenses when I was paying off my debts. These days, my monthly expenses don’t vary much, only according to how active my social life is (not very active currently!)
I use Google sheets to track my savings, investments and my various retirement scenarios!
Hi Weenie,
Thank you 🙂
It’s kind of cool being at the start of something that can be so life-changing, I’m looking forward to documenting my journey and the positive impact it has on my finance, wellbeing, and the environment too.
I totally know what you mean about a not-very-active social life! My mainly consists of saying “hi” to other dog walkers when I’m out with my Husky! 😀
I will take a look at Google Sheets, I guess it is fairly similar to Apple Numbers – Numbers allows me to record my basic data and then I’ve just been adding some simple graphs to visualise the month-on-month variations. I’ve not used it yet to forecast retirement scenarios though, that sounds pretty cool.
Was listening to one of the ChooseFi podcasts yesterday and they briefly mentioned calculating your FI number while factoring in pension income. Thankfully, one of my plans is a final salary scheme so that gives a bit of predictability and brings the FI number down a bit.
Added you blog to my reading list, so I’ll stay updated on your journey too! 🙂
Congratulations! I will be happy to follow your progress!
Good luck on your hard journey))
Thanks Illia 😁