Journaling Monthly Credit Card Statements

After spending time journaling a month’s worth of credit card transactions it seems that I lost all of the details somewhere in the bowels of my computer. Oh, the frustration of being a do-gooder. While most folks simply look over their credit card statements my husband and I make a point to document all of our transactions. It helps us keep tabs on our day-to-day expenses and at the end of the year we generate a very cool pie chart that depicts all of our spending.

The chart is very useful. It helps us figure out where we might need to cut back on spending as well as where expenses might increase in the future. It’s a useful tool for figuring out just how much we spend on entertainment, versus food, shelter, clothing, etc. In general it’s a great tool for talking about money. Every so often we take a look at it and discuss how our spending should change.

My husband was a good sport about my error. He pulled out the credit card statement and journaled all of our transactions all over again. Still I hate the duplicated and wasted effort. One good thing… the credit card statement was relatively small this month. We only had a handful of transactions.