Where's All My Money Going?

For a college student, I make fairly decent money. Well, at least that is what my pay stubs say every two weeks when I pick them up from my employer. Sometimes I just stare at the number wondering where in the world all that money could have gone. Did I really go out to eat that much? How many tanks of gas did I need to put in my car? Should I have extreme couponed a little bit more? 

Needless to say, I realized I needed to take a little bit better look at where I was spending money the most. If I wanted to be in control of my life, I needed to be in control of my finances a little bit better than what I was doing. 

What's an easy way to do that, though? How can I find out where all my money is going?

A weekly task I had already been taking part in was a weekly food diary to document what I was eating and where I was eating the most. 

For more information about the Food Diary, check out the blog post on the Food Diary. It'll be helpful for the rest of this blog post!

In the same section where you write down the foods you are eating each day, leave a little section to tally up a dollar amount for what you spent money on. It can be incredibly eye opening to see what items you spend the most money on. 

After two weeks of writing down what I was spending money on, I came to some conclusions. 

1. I put roughly $40 of gas in my car every two weeks. Maybe I should cut back on driving when I can!

2. I go out to eat at least 3 times a week at fast food restaurants. The same amount of money (roughly $30) could be spent on fresh, healthy foods from a grocery store and would last twice as long.

3. I spend an average of $15 on Twix every week. Can you say addicted? Because I can. I spend a lot of money on Twix candy bars. Roughly $60 a month actually. That's more than a whole tank of gas! My new goal is to cut back to a Twix candy bar every few weeks, rather than once or twice every day. 

After looking at what I was spending my money on, I figured out areas I could cut back on and set a weekly budget of $30 total for gas, groceries and extras. It's hard starting out, but thinking of all the money I might have left over is a very motivating influence. 

I suggest you try it out too! See where your money is going! Learning things about yourself can be insightful and kind of fun! 

Take a Look At Your Diet

It is a scary moment when you open your fridge and you realize you can't remember where the heck all your food went. One tip for this is to simply write down what you eat every day. There are multiple benefits to this food diary approach and you never know, it might be pretty eye opening to find out just what you're all eating! 

So what is the motivation to use a food diary, besides to monitor your refrigerator? One of the reason's I use a food diary is to monitor my gluten intolerance. For some people, like myself, there are certain foods you just can't eat. If you're first starting the process of finding out just what foods those are, again like me, having a food diary can help pin point what foods you're body can't use. 

A few other reasons to use a food diary: 

• Find out how much you're eating a week! Make sure it's a healthy amount, not too much or not too little. 
• Finding out where you can add some variety to your diet.
• Analyze your eating times. It can be really eye opening to find out when you eat during the day. Maybe there's some links between eating time and productivity?

But there are so many more reasons! You just have to find out what your reason is. Use it as a motivation to get where you want to be in your healthy lifestyle. 

It's easy to start a food diary, too. First of all, my recommendation is to start the food diary in your handy dandy planner that we talked about a few blog posts ago. This way you don't have to have multiple notebooks that you carry around with you throughout the day. If your planner is always with you, then you'll never have to forget to write down what you have. 

The food diary lay out:

1. Write the time when you eat. This can come in handy if you're analyzing your food eating patterns. 

2. Write down what it is that you're eating. Even if it's just a candy bar

3. Keep your morning, afternoon and night meals separated out. I recommend writing them in different colors or keeping a line between intervals of the day (ex: 6 am - 12 pm, 12 pm - 6 pm, 6 pm - 12 am, 12 am - 6 am)

4. At the end of the week, tally it up. Revisit what you ate and evaluate your weekly diet.

To evaluate, ask yourself some questions:

     What are you eating? 

     Are there things you can cut out or are there certain food groups you should be eating more of? 

     How much is healthy and how much is unhealthy?

     What do you want to change about it?

My challenge for you this week: Take a go at it. Try writing in your food diary for a week and see what revelations you might find from your eating habits. Share your experience with me on Twitter at @life_ceo.