The personal spending audit

Today, we take the first step on our FY25 personal finance journey. Whether you’re a student living at home or a married mom of three with a vacation house in Batangas, it’s probably been a minute since you’ve thought about how much you’re spending. That’s why today I challenge you to do a Personal Spending Audit (PSA) for the full month of January. We are going to need good data for the next steps in this process, and anything that you decide to do in the future will be somewhere on the spectrum of worthless to harmful if this step isn’t done with the right amount of serious diligence. With that said, let’s get started.

> Step 1: Build the spreadsheet:  This is my favorite part. Start a new Google Sheets or Excel spreadsheet. Name it whatever you want. I went with “PSA - January 2025”, but you do you. You can use my Google Sheets template here. Save your own copy (click “File” then “Make a copy”). Don't worry, I can't see what you're putting into the sheet. It's your own copy. Nobody has to know about Hello Kitty sock collection. If the spreadsheet is too intimidating and you want to strip it down to the metal, the most important columns are the Description (what it is that you spent money on) and the Amount (in Pesos). Everything else is helpful, but if that’s getting in the way, it’s not necessary. If the thought of building a spreadsheet fills you with dread, just do it in your Notes app. 

> Step 2: Track your spending:  Since we’re starting in the middle of the month, start tracking your everyday spending immediately. The first time I did this, I didn’t bother noting anything that was below ?100, thinking (without having done the exercise) that I didn’t really spend that much on sub-?100 things. That assumption turned out to be incorrect, so now I treat it like a calorie-counting exercise: I track everything. Every 3-in-1. Every taho. Every $1 subscription. I was shocked at how much cash I was leaking on a daily basis on these small little things that I didn’t think would matter.

> Step 3: Backfill your missing days:  If you do something every single work day, just put an average amount in (for lunch, or for transpo), and then try to fill in any blanks using whatever digital receipts you might have (search your email for “receipt” or “order”), or through checking your online credit card or banks statements. You can take data directly from bank statements. Just copy/paste it into your spreadsheet. Basically, just do your best to fill in what has happened. A lot of the magic of this process is in seeing your spending habits, and the remaining 21 days of January will do a pretty good job of demonstrating that. 

> Step 4: Forget you’re being watched:  To really get the benefit of the exercise, it’s best if you go about your month as you’d normally do it. Don’t be on your best behavior just to make the spreadsheet look good. I mean, if you intend to change your ways permanently already then go for it, but in my experience, it’s more informative to see the full depth/breadth of my spending without window dressing and it’s more impactful as an inspiration to change to see all the data in its entirety. (Is ?400/mo for taho reasonable? That’s rhetorical!)

> Step 5: Do it to completion:  Diligently track what you spend all the way to January 31st. Forget about making changes now. Just let the feelings pass through you as you watch yourself buy that second merienda donut. It’s been a tough week. Just do what you can to act natural and avoid making pre-completion changes.

MB bottom-line: That’s it for now. For those of you who really connect with the setup of a project, maybe use my template as a jumping-off point and spend some time fiddling around with the fonts and colors to make it your own. For those who hate the thought of setting something up, you can just track in your Notes app and fill it into some spreadsheet later. The key is to track. We’ll add it all up and work with this data later, but for now, our mission is like that of a mall security guard: observe and report. At the end of the month, I’m going to do a survey and do some giveaways to get a sense of how many people are doing this exercise and what they’ve learned, and we’ll try to gain the benefit of all that insight together!

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