Watching Expenses ... It's All About The Green Box
The Main Screen
The Screen That Goes to the Bottom Line
Above is the primary screen of Watching Expenses. Using companies assigned by you, all expense entries are entered on this screen. Deciding on a Company, setting the Month and the Payment type, the expense is added in the text fields above the large list box centered on the screen. Here the Amount and Purchase are added and the expense then saved. The Total Expenses Year-To-Date appears. Also, at the bottom the Total Year-To-Date Expense for the company is shown in the lower center list box. Its percentage of your total expenses is also shown. Dates are kept as years and months; the year being selected by you at the start of each session. This allows you to make entries in two years when closing out a year and credit card billing may overlap years.
The Right Column Is a Summary of Expenses
The right-hand column shows a list of companies where expenses have occurred. A monetary value for each company is shown which is the total amount of expenses made during the selected year. Click on the name of a company in the right column and a percentage amount indicating the value as a percentage of all expenses to date is shown. In the above image it can be seen that to date Verizon has used 565.06 dollars or other currency of your funds and represents a total of 2.34% of the total. Clicking on Verizon in the right column will show the same information in a different presentation style.
The Green Box
In the lower right is a value, here in green, as income is greater than expenses, which indicates your expenses position for the year. By entering all expenses charged on credit card or other Payment method, you show the expense now even if a trip is taken later. This keeps your expenses in real time and keeps from spending money that may have already been spent but not yet used as in a cruise. Of course, the onus is on you to keep Watching Expenses up to date but doing so is an easy, enjoyable activity.
Notice that Savings is shown with your Year-To-Date Expenses and Income. Savings is shown as the future must be considered and if not presented it is quite easy to forget savings. Your later dreams, particularly in retirement, will be achieved based on your savings today. As savings will most often come from income savings will have the effect of reducing the Flow so that your planning will not include funds placed in savings.
Other Screens in Watching Expenses
Watching Expenses provides both a Monthly Review and Yearly Review of your expenses and can be shown as individual companies or as categories (explained in our manual). This allows you to perform in-depth reviews of your spending and be able to see where excessive expenses may occur. After using Watching Expenses for a few months, you will appreciate how the database can reveal expenses habits, good and bad.
A screen used for Auto-Renewals is included in Watching Expenses. You enter information and with a monthly review you are able to prevent unwanted user agreements and subscriptions from automatically renewing. Set the date at eleven months so a month can be used to watch for email renewal notices or for active actions to occur in cancelling the auto-renewals. This is far easier to do than attempting to cancel an auto-renewal that occurred.
Future Expenses stores anticipated expenses for a future year allowing you to understand expenses that may be incurred in a specific future year. For example, if going abroad for a wedding or reunion is a possibility and may be a sizeable expense, enter the expense which will then appear when reviewing a future year. The advantage is that knowing future anticipated expenses you do not overextend yourself because of an important but forgotten commitment.
A downloadable/printer ready PDF file of the Instruction Manual is included with the Watching Expenses program. A sample expense is used to illustrate the process and sequence involved in using the program. After several entries you will find that the process is very user oriented and easy to perform.
Income, Dividends and Savings
The Important Three
Your wealth creating threesome, Income, Dividends and Savings, are entered in this screen. Note that a yellow rectangle asks you to select a year. As Watching Expenses is a multiple year functioning program it is important to state which year you are saving to. While Income, Dividends, Interest and Other Income are combined in To-Date Earnings in the lower right, it is important to understand the different forms of income and the amount of each related to total income. The values of Income, Dividends and Savings are transferred to the Main Screen shown above.