Budgeting 101: How to Track Your Spending & Set Up a Budget

How to track spending

Step number one is tracking your spending. 

This is my sticker kit for May. We are going to be using this layout as an example; You absolutely do not have to buy a sticker kit. I'm sharing with you guys everything I spent and made.

The month of May was mad chaos for me. I moved abruptly, so I’m paying for two places. Also, typically, I have it set up so my bills come out at the start of the month. You'll see May’s more scattered and the bills are higher than usual.

Color-coded budget

You want to track your bills, your savings, and your spending. The way that I break that up is all of my bills are yellowish-tan. Fast food for me is gray. Stuff, like from Amazon, is yellow-orange. Variable spending, shown in green, is my gas and groceries. 

The payday sticker is blue. I get paid from Etsy every week. I made $582, then $553, then $691. This last week I made $1,146, which is a large payday for me. Thank you for supporting me on Etsy. I really appreciate you.

I also get paid from YouTube. YouTube pays a month late, so I know how much to expect. I made $1,080 on YouTube. I do Amazon affiliates, so I will get paid $98 from Amazon next week.

Tracking spending

Gas this month was $45, $25, and $40. Groceries I try to keep in check, but I went over budget this month due to the chaos of transitioning from the apartment to the house.

As far as Amazon purchases go, I bought a book for $15 and baseball gear for $60. I bought bread keepers. The dryer needed an adapter for this house, which cost $17. 

I bought my son glasses for $120. I do have a sinking fund that I will use to pay for that when I pay off my credit card. My preschooler needed a framed picture of him for preschool graduation, which I bought for $15. 

My biggest expense was spending $410 at Kohl’s. Both of my sons needed completely new wardrobes, due to growth spurts. Then, VBS shirts for my boys for summer for $20. I put $370 and $225 towards sinking funds to cover big things. 

The reason tracking spending is important is, firstly, writing it down makes you less likely to randomly spend $20 at McDonald's every single day. It also makes you more aware of your spending. 

I have my new rent and my old rent. I have Internet at both houses for this month. Water was rolled into my rent previously. Plus, my old apartment didn't have a gas hookup, so I didn't have to pay for it. Water and gas for me this month was $180 and then $130 because there were fees to hook them. I wasn't super excited about that.

Ideally, you want all of your money coming in to equal all of the money going out. I like to balance everything out. For example, if I make $4,000 a month, I want to see that $4,000 completely tracked, down to the penny.

There are fees that come with running a business, right? I use Instant Ink and Canva. Wix is $20. I just switched to Squarespace, so I have fees for both this month. I purchased lights and mailers. I paid an editor for some of my content. I pay $16 for Adobe products. 

Adding everything up

Something I like to do, at the bottom of the budget, is to total out everything I've spent, put towards sinking funds, and paid in bills. Because this month isn't done yet, I’m going to use this sheet of paper instead.

In this payday, I'm going to include the $98 that is coming from Amazon. The only payday that's missing is Etsy, which will come in next week. This month, I made $4,150.

I spent $463 on business expenses for this month. For fast food, I spent $56. In the “stuff” category (Amazon purchases, clothing, etc…), I spent $681, the bulk of that at Kohl's. On variable spending, gas, and groceries, I spent $636. The total spending: $1,836.

We like to put money into sinking funds every single week. We haven't put our sinking funds in yet this week. Also, because of my move, I didn’t add money to the sinking funds on the 6th. For this month, we put $595 into sinking funds. 

For bills, since we paid two rents, the total was $3,004. If you add up how much I've made and spent this month, you will realize that the numbers do not work together at all. This month I spent $5,435. My pay this month was $4,150. This is highly unusual for me. I typically have things pretty balanced.

Preparing for June

I’ve set up the June sticker kit, for tracking expenses in June. I put notes on the left, where I will track business expenses. I added my YouTube check and rent. My gym and internet costs come out automatically. On the first of the month, I’ll pay $27 for home insurance. The only set bills that come later in the month are Walmart Delivery and Disney Plus.

You can call companies, like your insurance and gas, and ask them to set up the days you want to pay. Later, I will have the gas and water companies moved to the start of the month. 

I save in cash in my budget binder. Then at the start of each month, I pull the money out of my budget binder and add it to my bank account to take care of the bills for the month. I add to sinking funds on Friday.

I added stickers for birthdays and Father’s Day since those will come with expenses. I added Tuesday Etsy payday stickers, a YouTube payday sticker, and an Amazon affiliate payday sticker. 

These little shopping carts and little cars will represent my grocery and gas hauls. 

Budgeting 101

I hope you guys are excited to get a behind-the-scenes of my full budget. How do you track your spending? Let us know in the comments.