So I have been doing this thing since November where I write down literally everything I spend in a notebook, like properly old school, pen and paper. I tried apps before and I just never opened them after the first week. The notebook lives next to my keys so I see it every time I leave the flat and every time I come back. It is working surprisingly well but I am not sure if I am actually learning anything from it or just documenting my own slow financial decline in real time. Last month I spent £387 on food for one person which feels like a lot but I genuinely do not know if that is normal. I meal prep on Sundays which saves me from buying lunch during the week but I keep buying fancy coffee beans and that is probably £30 a month on its own. The bigger question is whether anyone has found a good way to turn tracking into actually changing behaviour, or does everyone just look at the numbers, feel bad, and carry on. Thoughts?
£387 on food for one person is not outrageous, that is about £12.50 a day which is pretty normal if you are buying actual ingredients and not just living on rice and lentils. The coffee beans are fine, stop feeling guilty about coffee beans. The real question is not what you are spending but what you are spending it against, because if you do not have a target number for the month then the notebook is just a diary with receipts in it. I tracked everything for about six months after I sold my flat and the only thing it actually changed was that I stopped buying lunch out, which saved me about £140 a month, and I started batch cooking chilli in quantities that my freezer could not physically contain.
Been doing something similar since the autumn, though mine is less a notebook and more a pile of receipts shoved in a biscuit tin. Every couple of weeks I sit down and add them up. Not scientific but it works well enough to spot the patterns.
The thing that shocked me was how much the little maintenance bits add up to. A tube of sealant here, a replacement bulb there, a bag of gravel for the path. None of them are more than a fiver on their own but last month it came to nearly £40 on bits and pieces for the house. That is before food and heating even come into it.
Not sure I could do an app. Half the time my phone is in the other room charging 