Overview

The first step in financial stewardship is to begin tracking your expenses and income. You will do this for the next two weeks.

Instructions for those who only use cash

Download the Expense Tracker Excel spreadsheet, open it, and save it to your computer with your name in the filename (for example, Jon Doe Expense Tracker).
- If you need help, review the Excel exercises in the ResourceCenter.
Explore the sample data on the spreadsheet.
- After you open the Expense Tracking spreadsheet, you will see two sheets (tabs at the bottom), the Expense Tracker and an example sheet. Click on the tab for the example sheet to open it up. This sheet gives you an example on how to fill out the Expense Tracker, where you will enter your own information.
Practice entering one of your recent expenses and one of your recent income transactions in the spreadsheet. Pay attention to the titles in columns A, B, C, D, and E. These titles will help you know what information to enter into each column whenever you record an expense or income.
Track your expenses and income for two weeks.

Instructions for those who use a debit or credit card

Locate your bank's website where you may find a report of your expenses. Explore any sorting, labeling, and exporting options there. Be ready to use two weeks of expense data there in Week 05. If your bank does not have a website, make sure you can get a statement of all your expenses and income between now and Week 05.
If you use cash for any expenses or income in the next two weeks, track it for at least the next two weeks using the Expense Tracker Excel spreadsheet.

Open it, and save it to your computer with your name in the filename (for example, Jon Doe Expense Tracker). If you need help, review the Excel exercises in the ResourceCenter (Excel Exercise and Excel Practice).
Explore the sample data on the spreadsheet. After you open the Expense Tracking spreadsheet, you will see two sheets (tabs at the bottom), the Expense Tracker and an Example sheet. Click on the tab for the Example Sheet to open it up. This sheet gives you an example on how to fill out the Expense Tracker, where you will enter your own information.
Practice entering one of your recent expenses and one of your recent income transactions in the spreadsheet. Pay attention to the titles in columns A, B, C, D, and E. These titles will help you know what information to enter into each column whenever you record an expense or income.

What's Next

You will continue tracking all your expenses and income for the next two weeks. In Week 05, you will need to have this information available to fill out a budget.