What’s on this page?
Tracking your spending might take some detective work to start with. Maybe you’ll need to look at multiple bank statements or credit cards. Stick with it! Thankfully there are some tools to help you.
Tools to track your spending
Here are 5 different ideas for how to track your spending.
- Apps specifically designed for the task!
There are lots of different apps that will take your bank and credit card data, pull it all together and allow you to categorise it. in the UK we have Emma, Snoop and more. The US versions are mint or empower. In New Zealand you can use Pocketsmith. - Use one bank card. Put all your spending through one card so you can use the data on that card to review and categorise your spending.
- Banking Apps. Some of the modern banking apps have categorising tools within them so you can track your spending and see where the money is going. Check out your bank account.
- Spreadsheet. Just track your spending in a simple spreadsheet! Or try ours – download the Spending Tracker Template
- Pen and paper. Good old-fashioned pen and paper and write down everything you spend.
It doesn’t really matter how you do it, just that you do it. Pick the method that you think you can stick to and start to track your spending. We need to know where the money goes!
Once you’ve decided on how you’re going to track your spending you need to categorise your spending!
Categorising your spending
For each item you bought/spent money on in the last month, categorise it so you can see what areas you’re spending your money on. If you’re using an app, it might have its own categories but you might like to come up with your own.
Choose categories that are meaningful to you. Don’t have more than 10 categories otherwise it becomes too detailed and hard to see what’s going on with your money! We had a friend who had over 30 categories and it was just too much and he spent longer categorising his spending than looking at what he could learn from where his money goes.
I’ve listed the ones we use below. Our categories are particular to our lifestyle and what we typically spend money on. By all means use ours as a starting point but you’ll probably need to adapt them…
- Accommodation / Housing – Airbnb and hotels
- Eating out – Restaurants and discretionary naughties
- Groceries – Food we buy to cook at home
- Education – Books, courses, videos
- Transport – All car costs (insurance, services), flights, trains, public transport, car hire
- Clothes – Clothes, footwear
- Entertainment – Cinema, shows, cooking courses, spas, fun stuff, renting movies, Thai massages
- Health – Prescriptions, gym, calisthenics classes, dentist, optician
- Misc – Cash, gifts, technology and accessories, other random stuff
Try our Spending Tracker Template
Just starting my journey so checking out your site. I see that Money Dashboard no longer exists so your page here needs an update fyi but wondering if there’s alternative that you can recommend?
Bev welcome. This is so exciting. We go through all the options in week one of the course which you can find the full notes here: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/rfs/course-notes/week-1/
What happened to money dashboard. Is there an alternative app you recommend? Many thanks.
hey Helen, I think they stopped doing it. We are using Emma at the moment but there is also Snoop and some of the banks like Monzo and others have inbuild apps… Alan
MoneyDashboard having closed a few years ago, can you share which spending tracker you are using? Your own excel one or one of the app you suggest?
Hey GCM, we use a combination of Emma and a spreadsheet. We have a new version of the tracking spreadsheet coming out this week coming for the 2026 course which should help with your other comment too…. Tune in Thursday and we will be going through all this on the new implementation session…… Are you signed up to this year’s course? Alan
Hey there – Just wanted to check which is the best Tracker to use. At the top of the Tracker page it recommends the combined Google Sheets option. However scrolling down to the Excel Template, it says it has more functionality than the Google Sheets version. What functionality will I miss out on, if I use the Google Sheets option please?
Hey Lorna, after the updates this year the sheets version now has FAR more functionality so if you can use the new google sheets version! Alan
You spoke of a google form linked to the spreadsheet. I can’t find d it.
Hey Sue, here is the link to the page: https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/take-control/spending-tracker-template/ Click the buttons at the top and create a copy of it. Alan
Hi Alan, I know you’re busy and in the middle another RFS (I killed 2 subscriptions today and saved £200/month, I just needed a nudge from you and Katie – thank you!). This page (https://rebeldonegans.com/finance/take-control/how-to-track-your-spending/) still has a link to Money Dashboard, given that they are no longer available could you update the page?
Thanks Terry, Good spot on the page, I have updated and need to work on this page! been a while since I checked it! lol
And AMAZING work cancelling those 200 subscriptions. This is AMAZING. Love it! Thanks for telling us Terry! Alan