pretty bubble charts!
This reminds me a bit of the concept of mind mapping which I learned about in grad school, and it really DOES help me sort out what needs to be changed. Thanks to bubbl I'm able to draw a pretty organizational picture of my finances! Here's how things flow now:
And it shows me starkly what I already knew: I have GOT to get those miscellaneous retirement accounts consolidated. I also want to make my ongoing savings a bit higher priority; I just opened an ING account and it does make it feel like the money is a step further removed from my hot little clutches.
Here's how I'd like that chart to look:
MUCH better - the three retirement accounts are consolidated, the saving is boosted in priority and automated, and I've got the long-term non-retirement savings in two accounts, one for travel, one for that mythical day of home ownership.
I don't have any changes to make to the rest of my money handling: I manually transfer funds from my paycheck into my bill-paying account, and by mid-month have enough to cover that month's expenses (including the next month's rent). I manually transfer funds from my paycheck into a short-term savings account; the balance is left for groceries, misc. spending, coffee, and gas. I've listed the expenses in order of value - most expensive to least. Yes, I spend more on coffee than on gas, but that's because I typically buy gas about every third or fourth week. Both expenses work out to about 50 bucks per month. (eventually I expect I'll spend at least a month tracking all transportation costs, including toll and transit passes. it'll be interesting to see what I really spend! but I'm not ready to add that to the tracking listl as yet.)
After organization, my areas that Need Improvement are a) tracking misc. spending, and b) really staying in my desired boundaries for my monthly spending. That's another reason to get more savings pullled out pre-check: if it's not locally available I'm far less likely to spend it.
To address item a) and potentially b), I will continue to track grocery spending, and will also track all other food/alcohol spending for the month of July. I bought a nifty little notebook (from the clearance rack! with cash!) for just this purpose.
Here concludes my Beautiful Sunday Spent On The Computer Thinking About Money.
ps. happy july!
Here's how I'd like that chart to look:
I don't have any changes to make to the rest of my money handling: I manually transfer funds from my paycheck into my bill-paying account, and by mid-month have enough to cover that month's expenses (including the next month's rent). I manually transfer funds from my paycheck into a short-term savings account; the balance is left for groceries, misc. spending, coffee, and gas. I've listed the expenses in order of value - most expensive to least. Yes, I spend more on coffee than on gas, but that's because I typically buy gas about every third or fourth week. Both expenses work out to about 50 bucks per month. (eventually I expect I'll spend at least a month tracking all transportation costs, including toll and transit passes. it'll be interesting to see what I really spend! but I'm not ready to add that to the tracking listl as yet.)
After organization, my areas that Need Improvement are a) tracking misc. spending, and b) really staying in my desired boundaries for my monthly spending. That's another reason to get more savings pullled out pre-check: if it's not locally available I'm far less likely to spend it.
To address item a) and potentially b), I will continue to track grocery spending, and will also track all other food/alcohol spending for the month of July. I bought a nifty little notebook (from the clearance rack! with cash!) for just this purpose.
Here concludes my Beautiful Sunday Spent On The Computer Thinking About Money.
ps. happy july!
Comments
There's a series of books by Nancy Kress which, in one of them -- the 2nd, maybe -- introduces and uses 3 dimensional mind maps as a fairly major plot point. Fascinating. She wrote the 1st book in the series (Beggars in Spain) in 1993. The entire series is worth reading, if you never have -- through provoking, if a little to easy out at the end.
Ever since I read the book though, I've been pretty dismissive of the real world mind maps. Sigh.