I used to keep a rough track on my different Debit, Credit cards Transactions and others - UPI and cash.
Yet I used to feel that I needed something more planned which could help me fine tune and control my
expenses in a better yet in a rational way.
One way was to look for an expense management App on Mobile.
However, I am already too heavily into using my work and home laptop and many apps on my Mobile.
So to prevent becoming even more "Digital" Heavy, I decided to do it manually but in a planned and graded way.
The methodology was to start writing Grocery expenses - Online plus Offline.
Then categorize them into
- Vegetables and fruits
- Dairy products
- Other eatables
- Non Food
While I tried to capture every expense, it is possible that some minor small expenses could have gone unrecorded.
Still, I did cover most of them.
There were quite many learnings & observations. I think a few might benefit you too:
1) Dairy and Non Food items had the major share. Combining these two, it came out to be around 65%.
For others, it could be more or less but I think for many it could be the norm.
I was slightly surprised with this since a fresh stock of Vegetables and Fruits are needed almost every two days
and their inflation rate is higher than that of other products.
2)At times, combo offers and bigger sizes might not seem like what we need.
However, opting for them can save more as we have to have lesser number of Grocery orders.
Yet in some cases like Liquid Detergents, it can be an adverse effect as sometimes we could tend to become
liberal in our use and quickly use up the available product.
3)Tracking does helps in saving on Items like Soaps, Biscuits, Floor Cleaners which we buy regularly but often they
hide in some containers and we tend to ignore and buy more.
Tracking would help us avoid over buying.
4)Tracking helps in avoiding situations when essentials like Milk, Cheese etc are about to be over.
5)Often everyday fine grained category wise tracking can become difficult. So one way is to see the pattern for the
first half and then make some inferences.
Overall, I have just kind of started on this Journey.
How to capture finer details and help myself on a more optimum use to help in
savings is something that I would need to learn more and implement.
For more such thought provoking Articles, insights and discussions, do come and join the wonderful world of Forumcoin. An English language forum, where you can discuss and share ideas and opinions on a variety of topics.
For sign up, click here :
https://forumcoin.com/index.php?r=5080
