Kakebo: how to spend and save money in Japanese

What is Kakebo

The word Kakebo is the three hieroglyphs for the book of housekeeping. The financial system with this name was invented by the Japanese woman Motoko Hani.

The Kakebo system is aimed at increasing savings and works on the principle of “saving the ruble a penny”. You will have to save in small amounts, but regularly.

What does Kakebo need

To maintain a budget according to the precepts of Motoko Hani, you will need two notebooks - a large one and a small one. In the big one, you will record all income, plan expenses and savings. You will have to carry the little one with you in order to record all expenses in real time and not forget anything.

How to take notes

With a small notebook, everything is clear: you simply enter the appropriate entry into it every time you spend money. You can draw a large notebook as you like. It should reflect:

Monthly income plan. It can be arranged in the form of a plate or a list. It is important that in it you can record all the receipts of funds: advance payment, salary, debt repayment, funds from the sale of a used laptop, and so on. At the beginning of the month, enter the income in which you are confident in the table, then you can add entries with a pen of a different color or, for example, in block letters.
Savings plan for the month. On the appropriate page, you indicate how much money you would like to put in a piggy bank or savings account. Moreover, you need to decide on the amount before you start planning expenses.
Monthly spending plan. All permanent expenses are entered into it: utility bills, apartment rent, communications and the Internet.

Kakebo - The Japanese Art of Financial Saving

The money remaining after deducting compulsory expenses and savings is proposed to be divided into four categories:

Living expenses: products, household chemicals, clothing, footwear.
Culture and education: education, trainings, tickets to museums.
Entertainment: meeting friends, going to the movies, short trips.
Other: all expenses that do not fall into the first three categories.

It is up to you to determine the proportions by which you will divide the money into four parts. If you plan your expenses wisely, you can easily stay within the categories for a month.

The Kakebo system is not limited to recordings alone. At the end of each month, you will have to analyze whether you followed the plan, where you saved money, where you spent too much. This will help you more accurately budget for the coming months and see what expenses need to be adjusted.

How to save on the Kakebo system

The system has additional tricks to help you grow your savings more efficiently.

Put the coins in your pockets in the piggy bank every day. What looks like a handful of coins today will be a hefty sum at the end of the month.
Send the returned debts to the piggy bank entirely. In fact, this is not income, you just returned the money that was missing in the previous months.
When exchanging large bills, save a small percentage in the piggy bank. Enough 50-100 rubles, later they are transformed into a larger amount.
Develop a system of penalties for yourself. Punish yourself financially for bad habits or, for example, skipping a workout: put 100 rubles in a piggy bank. In any case, the benefit will be: either you get rich, or you become more disciplined.
Divide the money you are going to spend by four weeks. All that remains of the seven-day budget, transfer to savings at the end of the week.
Set aside non-urgent purchases for a month. If after 30 days you still want to buy an item, do it. But it may turn out that she is not so necessary.

How to adapt Kakebo to modern technology

The system is tied to two notebooks, but no one bothers you to record current expenses in the application, and instead of the main financial book, use a table in Excel.

Kakebo - The Art of Financial Saving in Japanese

The situation is similar with the replacement of cash with a bank card. Instead of putting change from your pocket into a piggy bank, transfer part of the funds from the card to an additional account so that a round amount remains on it. For example, with a balance of 42 350 rubles, you transfer 350 rubles to the savings account.