Trial and error

Like I said, I've been using a 家計簿 for quite a long time now, but how I use it now is very different to when I first started out. The basics are pretty much the same, but the way of categorizing and recording has changed many times, and I daresay will continue to do so.

So things I have learnt. Would love to do this in point form. Can't seem to find any bullets. Hang on, have I been composing in the wrong part? Just found bullets on another screen!!

So I'm going to try to explain what we do for our daily spending- this is just for food, everyday expenses, toiletries, nappies, kids stuff, and eating out. Rent, insurance, tax, utilities, keitai, medical expenses, savings, car fund (loan and savings for 車検(shaken), insurance and tax) are kept separate and are written down once a month.

• Ok, biggest thing for me is to budget weekly and record from Monday to Sunday. I started off doing it from Sunday to Saturday because that's how the first book I had was set out, but that didn't work! For us anyway. Reason being, we would go out for lunch and do fun things on the Sunday and then nearly half of the weekly budget would be blown on the first day leaving us poor for the rest of the week. Learnt my lesson quick smart.


• No matter what the date is start afresh each Monday and work from there. Sometimes your figures won't be exactly for one month but in the long run it doesn't matter. Some months will have 4 weeks, others 5.


• Write down the name of the shop (abbreviations are also ok) and total of expense. You don't have to write down the price of everything you bought, just make sure you categorize it into food/ household items/other. That's how the book I use is set out so I just stick to the categories they have. At the moment I put groceries in food but eating out and things I don't consider extremely necessary, like a coffee from the coffee shop or donuts or something like that in other. I do this so I can work out how 贅沢(zeitaku) I've been in my spending. Nappies, tissues, pet food and kitty litter would all go into household expenses. It's up to you to decide how you want to categorize things though. Before we had kids I put groceries and eating out in the same category which was fine for us at the time because we were both working and ended up eating out a lot of the time. As an example of how to categorize, say if I bought veges, meat, washing powder, and a present for someone, I would categorize the veges and meat into food, washing powder into household items and the present into others. Then be done with it and throw the receipt away! At one stage I used to just stickytape the receipts into a memo book and add it up each week and not bother with categorizing which worked for a while but I could never figure out EXACTLY where I was spending too much. What was necessary and what was 贅沢.


• I put a set amount of housekeeping money in my wallet and work with that and only that. Depending on what's left on the Sunday we go out for lunch or get takeaway, and I pool anything else leftover. When there's enough there we usually use it to go to an onsen or somewhere. Kind of a ご褒美(gohoubi) for sticking to the budget.

By the way I don't allow for rice in the weekly budget. I haven't always kept it separate, but I have done so for the last couple of years. We usually go through 10kg in about 3 to 4 weeks so I buy that when it's necessary, and just make a note with the date, place of purchase and how much it was to remind myself when I last bought it.

And S gets a weekly allowance so I know how much he uses but we don't record anything in detail. For us it's just easier to get a total figure and leave it at that.

So, that pretty much covers it I think!
Any questions?
Hope I didn't turn anyone off!!!lol