Learn At Your Own Pace: Money Diary
I talk, or at least mention, Money Diaries a fair amount on Instagram and in this newsletter. They are a crucial aspect of my personal money journey and are a crucial tool for the vast majority of my clients. But, upon some reflection, I realized that it has been a long time since I actually explained what a Money Diary is.
So here goes!
First, the purpose of a Money Diary is to enable you to track your income and expenses in an organized and thoughtful way so that you can glean helpful information which, in turn, will help you implement new financial strategies to better reach your goals. Whew, that was a mouthful!
To simplify…
Money Diary = Tracking Income & Expenses = Data = Habit Shifts = Goal Accomplishment!!
See? They’re really cool.
There are a lot of Money Diaries out there, but they don’t all call themselves that term. There are things like YNAB and Mint and there are Pinterest versions of pen and paper written diaries.
I have never found a version that I think truly captures what I want, so when I started this work in 2016 I made my own. I have tweaked it over the years to the point that I don’t think the original would even recognize the 2023 version, but that means the 2023 version is pretty gosh darn amazing.
It includes:
Directions for using the spreadsheet
A way to update and personalize all spending categories
A way to update and personalize all income categories
A sheet for each month of the year
Emotional reflections that help you recalibrate and more quickly reach your goals
A year in review doc that can be used throughout the year to better understand trends
And now it also includes a Learn-At-Your-Own-Pace Video Module where I walk you through how to use the spreadsheet, some tips and tricks for how to streamline the process, guides for what to do when things don’t go as planned, and how to match the diary process with your larger financial goals.
Tracking income often gets ignored, or at least not highlighted, when doing traditional budgeting, which has always driven me bonkers. Income is half of the equation! And, by understanding our income mix and trends we are better able to plan for the future (i.e. if you understand that you always have lower income in the summer it is easier to plan for that throughout the rest of the year).
And expenses. Oh expenses! Often the goal in traditional budgeting is to lower all expenses as much as possible. While lowering expenses in certain categories may be helpful for reaching your goals (it often is!), it is often counterproductive to try to reduce all categories, or even many categories at once. For one thing, some expenses are out of our control! And, some expenses bring joy and ease into our lives such that removing them or drastically reducing them would end up working against our larger financial goals.
That’s why the reflection piece matters. You need to be able to understand which levers to pull and which ones need to be left alone. Knowing is empowering and exciting. Knowing means you can move forward with clarity, structure, and ease!
Ready to get going?
As always, I’m rooting for you.
XOXO,
