I have never been a big fan of specific, down-to-the-penny budgets. Every few days, I download my credit card transactions into Quicken and categorize them. Then, at the end of the month I run a quick report to make sure that my spending habits aren’t too excessive for certain categories. For instance, this helped me notice that I was spending too much money on groceries ever since moving a few months ago.

This is all well and good, but there’s often nothing I can do about spending too much except for telling myself to curb that spending the next month. The problem was that while I could get a daily update on my credit card balance, I never really knew what that number meant. This is because of the fact that it seems every month includes an unexpected cost – a $500 car repair, $250 for a new air conditioner, $50 for an excise tax (thanks Massachusetts!), etc.

Therefore, I decided to venture into the customized reports section of Quicken, and created a report that would only list expenses from certain categories and classes (I use classes to label expenses for business that will be paid back by my employer). I set the beginning date at the beginning of my credit card statement for the month. What I am left with is a list, and total, of all of my “non essential” costs.

When my wife and I calculated our monthly budget, we were left with about 25% of our paycheck left over after our expenses (I’ll go into detail on this later this week). Now, I can check any day of the week to see how much of that 25% I have used.

So far this has been very useful in getting a good feel for how I am spending money in the present, and adjust accordingly, instead of having to wait until the money has already been spent.