Tracking your Money Flow

When feeling stressed, the logical side of our brain cannot operate effectively. Which means solutions are blocked from flowing easily.

If you want a very simple, relaxing & effective way to assess your money matters, read on!

Money loves organised

Luckily, there are only 4 areas of money to consider when you are organising and sorting your money.

They flow in and out just like the tides in the Ocean.

Spending, Saving, Earning & Investing. That’s it. In. Out. Anything related to money will fall into one of these categories, and is either flowing in or out.

Spending & Earning will comprise of most of your day-to-day money activities (Out & In).

Let’s look at your money organising “system” that monitors the money flow.

Money Flow Overview

If I asked you where you keep financial records, how would you respond? If you don’t keep them in one place, is there a way to gather them up and put them into a drawer, a binder, a folder, etc?
If you do have a dedicated spot, if I asked you for something dated a few months ago, how would you find it? If it’s quite difficult, is there a way to organise it further?
If spending is one of the main daily activities, do you monitor it at all? How do you know how much you have spent or about to spend? Do you have a guide that gives you a general idea of how much money you have outgoing each month?
With the recent rise in prices due to inflation, are you aware of any new rates for things like heating, insurance, etc…? If not, then how would you look up what you are currently paying?
Consider creating a balloon diagram that shows the money coming in at the top and then down below it, are balloons for each section of spending where you allocate a reasonable guess at what you might spend.

You might prefer a spreadsheet but if that makes you feel anxious, then just keep a notebook with your diagrams in it.

Each month, you can estimate what you will spend and then at the end of the month, you can look at your bank statement and fill in what you actually spent.

For example, you can use a tracker to highlight days where you spent money on which category or use a calendar to add in the information.

Click here to immediate access pdf of my Money Flow Tracker.

Money Management is a tracking system – you’ll see lots of ideas for ways to track habits that are visual, you can use Otter.ai to dictate your results/budget (it transcribes for you). Make the exploration of what will work for you fun!

Electronic Money Management Systems are great but there’s so much automation that it’s easy to loosen your focus. They are created to save you time, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help categorize the bank statement uploaded into the feed.

In this case, we want you to make time! In all your busy-ness, it’s likely that your financial anxiety, in part, is coming from not being aware of your money situation. We can make up all sorts of calamity in our heads!

The point is focus. Energy goes to where you focus. So, if you add in a short, fun tracker to your day – you are no longer burying your head in the sand when it comes to money.

You don’t have to have it all figured out in one day – chunk it into bite size pieces! Try different ways to see what works for you.

When you are ready to look at the money pillars (Spending, Saving, Earning & Investing), then click here.