Do your own Spending Review! (Part II)

Now, spend some time analyzing where your money goes.

I would start with expenses and income that are recurring and expected to continue for the foreseeable future - e.g. mortgage or rent, salary, utility bills, insurances, ect.

Then I would take a look at the discretionary expenses - e.g. grocery shopping, restaurants and drinks, cinema, sports, ect.

Is your spending in line with your expectations, especially in the discretionary areas?

At the end of this you should have a list of categories that can classify your full spending. I copied the list of unique categories (each category should appear only once) in a separate Excel tab and via a simple excel formula (sumif - you can check it out) I can see now the total movements for each of them (second tab in the Excel file here).

Then, you can also see the monthly evolution of your financial positions - it is just a more sophisticated formula (sumifs). This is implemented in the third tab of the Excel file.

Next, let´s talk about saving rate in part 3!

PS Some categories will still be unclear -e.g. if you withdraw cash at the ATM or if you get one bill for your credit card - it is up to you to steer away from them to maximize transparency.