How long do you need to track your spending for until you get a good idea of your budget and what that actually looks like? A month, 3 months, 6 months of spending? That sounds cumbersome, doesn’t it. But what if I told you that you can get a really good idea of what you spend, just by tracking for 2 weeks?

Back in 2016, I volunteered with the Financial Wellness program with Catholic Charities of Oregon. It’s a great program that places people who are in some pretty tight spots financially with coaches like me who can help them take control of their finances.

One of the biggest hurdles for people in the program was the budgeting part. It was an essential first step because I couldn’t really help the person I was working with until I had a better handle of the numbers around their income, bills, debt, and spending.

Tracking this for a period of months wasn’t realistic for someone who was financially stressed and needed help now, so we told the people we worked with to just track for 2 weeks.

That’s it. 2 weeks. Then you double that number, subtract any one-time expenses, add back recurring expenses that didn’t occur in those 2 weeks, like your mortgage payment, and viola - you have a pretty good estimate of your spending.

Now, in an ideal world, tracking your spending for 3 months is ideal, because you’ll have a much better idea of your actual expenses if you track over a 3 month period, but the important thing is that you get started. And you can get started by tracking for just 2 weeks, so give it a try!

That’s it for today. Tomorrow, we’re going to recap the week and I’m going to give you a little preview of next week’s theme.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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