Working with data

I’m currently working on improving my finances. Don’t get me wrong, my finances aren’t in a bad position, but I want to save more money, and try and figure out where I’m spending silly money. So, I want to do 2 things:

• Save money

• See where I’m spending silly money

I could guess where I’m spending the silly money, and I’d probably be mostly accurate. I could also guess where I could save money, and I’d probably be pretty right on that too. But I wouldn’t have the whole picture, and I’d delude myself as well.

Our brains love doing this to us. When I think back into the past about all the silly money I’ve spent, I’m only going to remember the not so bad things. I’ll probably think I’ve not really spent that much. I’ll tell myself I only spend little amounts here and there.

That’s because I’ve got no data to work with. The cold hard numbers don’t lie, and until I’ve got those in front of me I shouldn’t be even attempting to answer these questions because I just won’t be a) honest, and b) remember that much of it.

So my first task in sorting out my finances is to get some cold hard facts. I’m doing that in 2 ways. The first way is to check my bank account more often and have a spreadsheet of all my outgoings and incomings, and the second is to use the great (and free) website Money Dashboard.

I only got introduced to Money Dashboard today, but it’s already helping me out a lot. It lets you tag your regular transactions so you can see what categories you’re spending your most money in and try and rectify it.

Working with data doesn’t just work with money either, it can be applied to any part of your life. Especially health: try writing an honest food diary for a week and honestly tracking how much exercise you do in a week. If not anything else it’ll shock you into action.