Get to Know Your Spending With This Free Printable Expense Tracker

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The first step of budgeting is to become familiar with your spending patterns. Here is is a free printable expense tracker to help you.

free printable expense tracker
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If you get to the end of the week, or the end of the month and you have no idea where your money goes, then tracking your expenses day to day is a fundamental exercise in getting to know your spending habits.

It’s an eye opener – it can be a surprise just how much little expenses add up!

I no longer track expenses all the time, I use a proactive money management plan that saves time as well as money. It’s super easy and effective.

But it can be a really good idea to do a month or so of expense tracking to really get a handle on your spending when either you’re just starting your budget or when you need to get back on track.

Like any habit, remembering to write down every expense takes a little time getting used to.

To make the task easier, I’ve created some printable household expense worksheets do download.

An expense tracking worksheet is great for tracking cash expenses, particularly those that don’t include a receipt.

Instead of forgetting what you’ve spent, you can write down your expenses immediately on the wallet-sized expense tracker.

Update – how times change in a few short years! Alternatively, you can use a Smartphone app.

Disclaimer: This is general information only. In this blog, I share my savings and budget planning and what works for us, linking to authority websites where relevant. You should always consult a qualified financial expert when making money decisions to tailor plans to suit your circumstances.

Home Expense Tracker

Weekly Expense Sheet

The first expense worksheet is for use at home. Print it out and put in on the fridge or somewhere convenient so that you and others in the household can write down the day’s expenses.

If you keep a conventional budget, these expenses can then be transferred to your budget at a convenient time.

It’s a good idea to keep the expense sheet with an envelope for receipts. These can then be used to balance your bank and card statements.

The problem with convention budgeting software is that it is based on bank statements, not actual expenditure.

So if you withdraw $50 from the ATM, you have no record of what you actually spent that money on. Also, if you use EFTPOS in store and buy items from several budgeting categories, there is no record on your bank statement of the breakup of expenses.

This is where keeping receipts is important. Whether you use budgeting software, an App, Excel or paper and pen, your receipts allow you to balance your bank statements and still break up your expenses into something meaningful.

This is a really important point.

There’s no point just tracking your expenses. You have to also use this data to analyse your spending. That means taking these expenses, organising them into meaningful categories and then tallying the total.

Anyway, back to tracking…

What about cash purchases where there are no receipts?

This is where you tracking sheet (or app) comes in handy. You can write your spending down as you spend it so you can allocate and analyse it later. That $50 ATM withdrawal might be $5 for coffee, $10 for work lunch, $25 for groceries, $10 for the kids’ tuckshop. When you allocate expenses to a category and then tally each category, you get a clear picture of your spending patterns.

The expense sheet comes with a section at the bottom to make tallying up expenses into their relevant categories easier. Then you can input these weekly totals into your budget in a matter of minutes.

Print the worksheet on both sides to save paper.

For more information about tracking expenses, check out the article When to Track Expenses and When Not to – The First Step to Budgeting.

Wallet-sized Printable Expense Tracker

Wallet Sized Expense Tracker

The second printable expense tracker is for the wallet. This one can be cut out and folded into wallet sized convenience for tracking expenses on the go.

It is very easy to forget what you spent your money on and how much, especially on expenses that don’t come with a receipt. Writing your expense down on the spot mitigates this problem. You should be able to print this sheet (up the same way) on both sides of the paper.

Both worksheets are in PDF format, so you’ll need a PDF reader like the free Acrobat to view the files. Download the files by clicking on the links below and saving.

I’ve tracked my expenses, what now?

A month of tracking expenses should give you a very good idea as to your regular spending habits.

Now it’s time to create a budget based on your spending patterns and financial goals.

The important thing is to take the information you’ve gleaned from this exercise and make it work for you so that you are prioritising your spending according to your goals.

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8 Comments

  1. Hello Melissa,

    Thank you very much for the excellent expense tracker sheets. I have just printed the wallet size to assist my daughter (19 yo) with her budget. She really has no idea how much she spends but loves forms, so I’m sure this may help her a lot. I will let you know her thoughts on it. I’m sure she will find a surprise or two if she is disciplined enough to use it!

    Kind regards,
    Kaye

    1. Melissa

      The Real Person!

      Author Melissa acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

      says:

      Ta, I hope that it comes in handy!

  2. Hi Melissa,

    This is just what my husband and I need! I am really trying to start being frugal but one of the hurdles is finding out exactly where our money is going. Is all those little bits! As you say especially when you get cash out of the ATM and it just disappears! LOL! Thanks for a great site.

    1. Melissa

      The Real Person!

      Author Melissa acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

      says:

      Hi Lisa, I hope that you find it helpful.

  3. Wow, thanks Melissa, I have been “trying” to budget and I was finding it hard to keep a track of each of my allocated expenses a month, especially when I withdraw cash. I just couldn’t think of how I was going to do it besides trying to carry around a notebook, which hasn’t been successful yet. This will be a great way to keep myself and DH on track with our weekly spending.

  4. Melissa

    The Real Person!

    Author Melissa acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

    says:

    Thanks Tracey, hope you find the expense sheet helpful!

  5. Tina Myrick says:

    I’m glad I found this I really needed it. Thank you.

    1. Melissa Goodwin

      The Real Person!

      Author Melissa Goodwin acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

      says:

      Hope it helps :)