An Expense Tracker That Doesn't Suck

Less than 15 seconds to log your expenses, no fancy tools required.

Dear Friend,

I don’t need a budget. I have a predictable salary and my investments have also been designed to be predictable. My expenses, on the other hand, are anything but. Lately, I’d been noticing that my balances were getting tighter - and while I have the luxury of being in a dual-income household where no necessity gets affected - I was upset about how my money genuinely seemed to be going down the drain.

So what I needed, was two things:

1. A tracker to document and to help me understand what I was spending on

2. The discipline to actually track every expense

There’s enough research at this point to show that actively recording any metric you want to measure or improve immediately supports discipline. The very idea of keying in Rs. 2,500/- of arbitrary shopping on Amazon will pull you away from spending that money. There’s even a paper that proves persistent expense tracking will reduce discretionary spending and improve financial self-awareness.

Credit: tubik.arts on dribbble

And the key to staying disciplined? A tracker that makes the process easy. During this phase of figuring out the right tracker, I downloaded apps (way too cumbersome and required too much input) and even tried to write my expenses in a notebook (too much work and not at all travel friendly!) before finally landing on Google Sheets.

So with enough tinkering and pestering multiple AI platforms for code, I created a sheet that just worked for me. It’s automated to fill up dates, which means that the only things I need to do is select the category/head of expense and fill in the amount. And with enough recording, I get weekly, monthly and even annual views!

Naturally, I had to share it, so I’ve created a pretty nifty template that you (and your family!) can use.

I only have to enter Category and Amount. And notes, if I feel like it.

Troubleshooting (and stuff)

Here are a few things about and around the sheet that might be useful for you to know before you start using it:

1. No, I can’t give you edit access: This is a template that everyone gets a hold of. I can’t give edit access, so please don’t request it. Instead, make a copy of the sheet.

2. This sheet is optimised for Google Sheets. I like having the tracker on my phone and google sheets makes that possible.

3. While it’s really, really, easy to enter expenses on the fly, I’d recommend opening the sheet on your desktop the first time you open it. Makes copying the sheet easier.

4. You can add your own categories! I added my son’s name as a category to keep track of what I’m spending on him, for example. I also added ‘health/fitness’ as a category. There’s a small pencil icon that helps you add categories to the list.

5. The new categories won’t auto-appear on your weekly, monthly and annual views though. But it’s very easy to bring them there! Just insert a new row, between two categories, type out your category (make sure it's spelled the exact same way!) and drag the formula cell down. Done.

6. If you like pivot tables, we’ve got those too! The Weekly_View, Monthly_View and Annual_View offer pivot tables where you can see the data presented in different ways. But because the number of cells in the daily sheet is limited (for your own sanity), you might have to update the range on the table every so often. But that’s like, two clicks. Just click on the table’s edit button → select data range. The range will automatically show an updated number with the new cells. And just like that, you’ve got a pivot.

Overall, this tracker should fulfill most of your recording needs. There are fancier (and more expensive) trackers and spreadsheets and apps out there, of course, but if you’re looking for a no-frills solution, this should work.

I do hope you use it - and more importantly - find it useful.

Coming up in The Ledger: My favourite headphones are not by Apple. Proteinmaxxxing. How I use AI for healthier finances. Stalking finance communities. A project on love and money lost.