Paycheck to Paycheck: wrote down expenses and income for the month. Here's what happened

I am Sasha, married, and have a child. I work as an SMM manager in an agency, I get 50,000 rubles. Sometimes I take orders from friends and set up ads on social networks. Dad taught me not to be afraid of any work, so I can glue the wallpaper or deliver the package. I grab orders for one-time part-time jobs on a popular service. Sometimes I write articles for Lifehacker.

My wife has a small income - she is a photographer. Now she is sitting with a child, so I manage to hold one or two photo sessions a month. Shared budget. We put everything in one cauldron, and then we discuss where to spend what. We live quite modestly, only a couple of loans, there is no need to pay off the mortgage, but money is still often not enough. There are no savings at all, except for 10 thousand for an electric scooter. Where the money is flowing, I do not quite understand. There is a feeling that complete chaos reigns in our finances.

I installed the Money Pro app to take an honest look at the family budget and draw conclusions.

Divided money and contributed assets

To begin with, in order to understand where what funds are available, I made different wallets in Money Pro. In one I wrote information about the salary, in the other I indicated my wife's bank card, added a credit card, cash and a PayPal account. For each type of expenses and income in Money Pro, you can provide your own wallet: pay for products with a salary card, for travel in a minibus - from cash, and transfer foreign income from freelancing to a foreign currency wallet. In this case, the amount in the reports will be shown in rubles - the program itself will recalculate at the existing rate. In the section "Assets" I entered our apartment and my wife's dacha at the cadastral value.

And in the section "Liabilities" - the balances on our two loans. Financial literacy rises, and with it self-esteem. We renovated the bathroom and toilet a year ago. They took 200 thousand rubles for 2 years at 9.99% per annum. And they also bought a dishwasher.

I realized that we are actually millionaires, albeit with modest incomes.

I wrote down the first expenses

I went to the supermarket for diapers and food. Money Pro allows you to record expenses in separate categories. If something is missing, then it can be added. I made a category "For a child", and added the products to "Food", having saved a photo of the receipt in the application. Next time I'll see at what price I take butter and milk in another store. On the way, I grabbed a pizza with pineapple and entered it into a new category "Cafes and Restaurants".

My wife arrived late from a photo shoot outside the city, took a taxi. I had to create another new category in the application - "Taxi and Transport" - and add expenses. But the wife received payment for the work and immediately prepayment for the next photo session. This amount was also added to the application by creating a subcategory "Photoshoot" in the "Business Income" section.

At work, I eat lunch in the cafeteria, so I put my expenses in the Canteen subcategory in the Lunches category. I have a good relationship there and pay once a week, so I donate not every day, but when I pay a favor. I also take coffee from the machine. I have never counted all these 70-100 rubles before. Now with a creak, but I'm writing it down. I put my coffee in the Cafes and Restaurants subcategory.

For my wife's birthday, I ordered a parcel from an online hypermarket. Took an action camera plus some food and baby products. Usually I registered all expenses for the day in separate checks, but then I decided to make a split transaction - indicate all costs in one check, including delivery, but categorize them. By the way, for the action camera I received a cashback of 471 rubles, also contributed to the income.

Family budget: cashback from an online store

I'm starting to see what I'm spending my money on.

Registered the planned income

Within a week it became clear that financially my life is quite a "Groundhog Day". The main expenses and income are the same. Received a salary - bought food, paid for a communal apartment. Income from freelancing, providing small services and the wife's earnings make a pleasant variety. For example, I caught an order for wallpapering in a nursery. Recorded payment at the end of the month as expected "Business Income".

In addition, there were several more categories of income that I did not know about, for example, cashback from online purchases. In the middle of the month they gave us 5,000 rubles in honor of my wife's birthday. Previously, gifts were just pleasant surprises, but now they are also an item of income.

The general picture of transactions can be viewed in the "Reports" - "Transactions" menu by setting the required reporting period.

Having entered all the received and expected income for the month, I realized how much money the family will have and what we can count on.

Prescribed planned expenses

Having received money as a gift, we immediately began to think about where to attach it. Previously, the wife would simply go for a manicure or buy a dress. We are used to spending easy money. But by controlling costs, you start thinking more about the future. We decided to prescribe the expected expenses for a month in advance. So we will understand whether we can easily spend the donated money. We opened the calendar in Money Pro and added:

utility bills (including internet and telephone);
our repair and dishwasher loans;
payment by credit card;
transportation costs for me;
diapers and other little things for a child;
hosting for the wife's portfolio site to receive orders for photo shoots;
my lunches at work.

We continue to pay 9,220 rubles on the loan we took for repairs every month. With our income, this amount is tangible. It's good that the apartment is your own and you don't need to pay off your mortgage. I added this consumer loan to the "Debts" category by creating a subcategory called "Repair Loans" and scheduled the payment reminders. There I also added an easy loan for a dishwasher.

When you prescribe all your planned expenses for the first time, it's a shock. But through honest conversation with yourself in the language of numbers, you can learn to look at things realistically and take control of your financial well-being. For all the planned expenses, I have set reminders and notifications by dates. When the specified day came, I just had to click on the "Pay" button in the application - and the expense was recorded. You can also enable the "Swipe automatically" function, then you won't have to press anything. However, I did not touch it, so as not to miss the payment.

When you see how many compulsory expenses are to be spent next month, you no longer want to impulsively spend money. They decided to postpone the sudden 5,000 rubles.

Introduced budget restrictions

I often allow myself to relax after work in a good place for dinner or craft beer. On weekends, our main leisure time is restaurants and cafes. By the end of the month, I wanted to know how much I had spent on all this. In Money Pro, you can view expenses by category using a filter. It turned out almost 7,000 rubles, and this is a bit too much. By cutting back on visits, we could start to save on the airbag. Or at least buy an electric scooter - with it I will save money on the bus from the metro to my home. It's hard without a cafe, especially for my wife on maternity leave. I decided to set a limit on the cafe 3,500 rubles per month.

Money Pro has budgeting and cost overrun indicators, but they are available in the full version of the app. And I have a free one for Android. I wanted to buy a full one.

Received a monthly report

So, over the course of a month, I recorded expenses and income. It is not difficult, you get used to it quickly, because the operations and amounts are approximately the same. It's time to go through all the reports available in the no-purchase version.

Report for the month: income and expenses

Income / expenses: we received 86,500 rubles and spent 83,559 rubles. We live from paycheck to paycheck, and my paycheck alone is clearly not enough.
Assets / liabilities: assets are in place, but liabilities - by 132,640 rubles.
Transactions: it is clearly seen on what and when the money was spent, as well as what income came. More convenient than writing in a notebook. Therefore, I saw unexpected sources of income, such as cashback. True, so far he has brought only 471 rubles.
Scheduled transactions: you can see what awaits us in the future, what money we will receive and where we should spend. Our stable income consists of my salary of 50,000 rubles. I already knew that. But the required monthly expenses are 22,120 rubles. It turns out that if you do not earn extra money, then only 27,880 rubles remain for food and everything else.

My findings

I haven’t managed to save anything yet, but in the end I found where the money was going. By reducing the budget for cafes and restaurants, next month we will be able to save and set aside 3-4 thousand rubles.
I have developed a useful habit of writing down expenses. There was a feeling that money is not just disappearing, and you can control it.
We should start putting cash gifts and unplanned income into a piggy bank in order to have some stock of finances and not use a credit card in an emergency. So we put aside 5 thousand rubles.
It is important to plan all future expenses at least six months in advance. And regular, like utility bills, and one-time like vacations and New Years. And so I did.
It is equally important to mark the planned income in order to understand what to expect.
By subscription, you can turn on family synchronization, then at each expense my wife and I will receive a message in real time. This makes the accounting more accurate - nothing will be forgotten or lost.
There are desktop versions of the application - it is much more convenient to plan expenses and then study the details on the big screen. Especially if you want to use Internet banking, that is, download transactions directly from the bank in the necessary categories. I am going to install the application on my computer.