If you are like me, you have more accounts than you can remember. You have checking accounts, savings accounts, investment accounts, credit card statements, maybe you even use the old checkbook to write down expenses (I’m looking at you Mom). It can be downright overwhelming trying to keep track of it all.
If you want to truly understand how you spend your money and see where it all goes it can be a game-changer to have everything aggregated into one account that gives you the big picture of your overall finances.
I think we often believe we are doing OK with our spending, but when you connect all of the dots and can analyze patterns and see whether spending has increased over a time period, it can be really helpful in spotting problems and making changes.
Here’s a recent example from our life.
I will be the first to say, I really didn’t think I was spending that much on groceries. But somehow over the last year, I realized that I was spending over $1200 a month on our groceries (this was not including any takeout)! I was shocked because I had penciled in our budget that our groceries were supposed to be around $600 a month.
How did I double our grocery budget?
First, I started regularly using Instacart, which don’t get me wrong, is an awesome thing to be able outsource to someone else. But with the higher prices of each individual item, plus the taxes, service and delivery fees and tip, it easily added about $50 extra to my grocery bill each week (that’s $200 extra for the month).
I also started doing all of my shopping at Mariano’s, a local grocery store in Chicago, because I got bored (hello global pandemic) and wanted a change of scenery. Before the pandemic we were very consistently doing our grocery shopping at Aldi with the occasional Costco run because the savings are huge. But somewhere along the way, I veered off course and started shopping elsewhere. That made a huge difference. Where I was normally spending $125-150 at Aldi, it was costing roughly double at other grocery stores.
Once I realized this, I was able to bring our grocery bill back down to about $800 per month (It’s not perfect but it’s much better), saving us about $400 per month. Over the course of the year that’s nearly $5,000 in savings. You could nearly fund an entire ROTH IRA with those savings. More on that later.
How Did I Track My Expenses?
The FREE tool that I found and that has been a game changer for me is Personal Capital. This App links all of your accounts into one place (so think student loan accounts, mortgage, 401(k), checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards etc.) When you have everything in one place, you can easily track what your net worth is, by seeing what your liabilities are and what your assets are. Did I mention it’s totally free to use?
So Where Do I Find It?
You can navigate to their website here to check out the company and all of the different tools they offer. But I’d suggest going to the app store and downloading the app to your phone so you can very easily and quickly access this information about your spending whenever you need it. I typically check my app several times a week.
If you want $20 cash for using my referral link, you can click here.
Once you’ve downloaded the app, you will want to link to all of your financial accounts. I know a lot of people get nervous to link their accounts for fear of a breach or data privacy issues. You can check out their extensive security measures here.
This tool has saved me so much time and keeps me fully informed about my financial picture at all times. I hope you find this resource as helpful as I have!
