How does the financial markets impact our daily expenses ?

We may think that our day to day job that has nothing to do with financial markets. But there are enough reasons to track a handful of economic indicators because they will influence our life. It could either impact savings, spending, investment or even your future job prospects or hike in salaries.

For example, we would have seen at least 30% spurt in grocery bills for the past few months. It’s an impact of food inflation, which rose to an 11-year high of 19.95%, for the week ended December 5, 2009.

Most of our monthly financial decisions such as providing home loan EMI, child’s education or something as basic as daily consumption of milk are largely determined by these economic parameters. So, its always benefits if we keep tracking our expenses and these finance indicators so that we can manage it easily.

Conversation between three friends while writing their month end hisaab

Amit: I have paid 90 rs in auto for all of us.

Tanmaye: What about the movie tickets i paid last to last week dont you guys remember it was 300 rs per head.

Vick: Hey but i dont remember any of these, infact i had paid for maid/dhobi and other household things ?

Just think how difficult it is to manage the above scenario,  moreover if you have bigger group of friends.

trackspends can help here all you have to do is send sms whenever you incur any expense and trackspends will account it. Also it provides single account to track for all your friends so its simple and easy to manage.

For more details check this presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/callshubhan/group-finance-trackspends

Whats get measured gets managed...

While the above statement is generally said for a company, i feel that its also true for individuals.

Why measuring works:

There are several reasons why what gets measured gets managed:

1. When you measure something, you bring your attention to it

This is the first benefit you get by measuring. How can you manage if we don’t even pay attention to it? By measuring you direct your attention to it.

2. When you measure something, you know where you are

Sometimes we don’t realize the severity of a problem we have until we see the facts. That’s why measuring something is important. It helps you see the truth of where you actually are. In personal finance, for instance, it’s easy to think that you already live wisely. Only after you see your income and expenses by numbers might you realize that you have problem. This realization in turn gives you the motivation to do something about it.

3. When you measure something, you see your progress

Not only can measuring help you know where you are, it also helps you see your progress. You will see whether or not you have done the right thing and – if you do – whether or not you have done enough. Seeing how far you’ve gone also motivates you to keep moving forward.

How should we measure:

I think the biggest factor here is keeping it simple, we as a person cannot do complicated measurement for long. That’s why you need to keep it as simple as possible. The simpler it is, the more likely you will stick with it in the long term.

So keep it simple, and keep measuring your expenses.

What do you think? Do you have thoughts or ideas about managing personal finance?

Are you bold enough to share your expenses with friends....

Help us integrate trackspends with your favourite social sites .......

These are the first of blogs which we want to float for figuring what/how we can integrate trackspends with any of the existing social sites like twitter/facebook/orkut etc.

So how do we integrate trackspends with twitter ? Here are couple of options and their pros and cons :

1) Use twitter direct messages to allow users to update their expenses - Badly failed - Not even single user did Twitter Direct messages even though we have implemented and released it? See the details here and you feel the idea is right but not implemented properly write us

2) Allow users to update their expenses sent to trackspends to twitter feeds, so whenever you sent trackspends a message the message will be updated in your twitter feeds so that your friends and followers can view it. Whats the benefit of it ? to be frank i dont see any real benefits apart from just doing a comparison or informing friends / followers about day to day expenses which may lead to heated conversations and discussions. ? But again whats your thoughts on this ? Do you approve it ?

Also let us know any other ideas for integrating with twitter, or you just feel that its better to be off twitter add comments here?

What do you think is the best way to track your expenses

[SURVEYS 1]

Now use Twitter Direct Messages to track your expenses...

Now you can also track your expenses from Twitter. Add your twitter username in Trackspends account and  follow trackspends in twitter (www.twitter.com/trackspends) and send direct messages to trackspends as :

d trackspends 100 rs in lunch, 30 rs in parking

Your account will be updated with the above expenses just like SMS based updation. For more details visit: Twitter How it works .

Let us know your feedback here Feedback

Use categories/keywords to track expenses project wise with screenshots

Trackspends can be used to manage and track expenses , project or item wise, for example tracking expenses on Home interiors.

Here is how it simplify tracking and managing project wise finance.

1) Login to your account and create new category, for example:

New category = "Home Interiors"

2) Add all the keywords that you feel is necessary for tracking interiors - Keywords can be added later on also:

Keywords for "Home Interiors" : kitchen tiles, laminates, glass doors,granite,apparels,fevicol, carpenter, ply .....

See a Sample:

[caption id="attachment_54" align="aligncenter" width="987" caption="Add category and keywords for corresponding category"][/caption]

3) Now send SMS with any of the above keywords, example "2000 sky blue laminates" and trackspends will consolidate it in under the category "Home Interiors" hence making it easy for us to track and view how much we have spent.

Now your expenses will be categorized in as:

[caption id="attachment_55" align="aligncenter" width="796" caption="Expense in Home Interior"][/caption]

In very similar way it can be used for specific projects or items For example Tracking holiday trip expenses by creating a new category ("Coorg trip") and corresponding keywords to track it.

Also subsequently plan to provide a budget wise tracking. Do let us know  your thoughts on it?