Charting income & expenses
One of the things that Your Money or Your Life
The idea is to make a note each month of your total income and your total expenses, plot those points on a chart using different colored lines, and post the chart somewhere where you will see it every single day. I have mine posted in our walk-in closet, so I actually see it at least twice a day, and sometimes more. It’s been a great motivator to me. I look at it and visualize expenses going down, income going up. Obviously the idea is to have your income line be greater than your expenses line. When this happens, the space in between the two points represents money for savings or investments.
I do my chart using graph paper & some gel pens, but you could easily create one in Excel or OpenOffice’s Calc if you prefer to do it electronically. Here is a sample chart, using random figures:
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