How to Stick to A Budget Series: Step 2

Looking at Current Spending

Taking a hard look at current expenses is often an eye-opening experience for my clients. In Step 2 we look at where the money is going and decide where we want to make changes to move toward the financial future that we identified in Step 1. Over the years I have found that my clients were able to form a clearer picture of where their hard-earned money was going through the use of some common financial tools:

• Bank statements are a terrific place to start for tracking spending. Statements won’t tell you what you purchased on a specific day at a particular store but they will show trends such as restaurant spending and convenience shopping.

• Making spreadsheets and lists of spending categories with several months of totals will once again allow