Diaries can be a great way to keep track of personal events, whether it be a diary for fitness, dreams, diet, travel, school, spending, or just daily occurrences. In particular, teens can greatly benefit from keeping a diary that tracks their day-to-day expenses. Teens who track their spending are able to reflect on their financial choices and readjust their spending habits if necessary. A teen expense diary is a journal in which a teenager can keep a record of their daily spending. As a result, teens will gain a clearer sense of financial responsibility and a greater appreciation for effective budgeting.
How to Set Up a Teen Expense Diary
First, pick a notebook (or even just some loose leaf paper) that will serve as your teen expense diary. On the first page, create a list of your current savings, such as allowance, birthday money, or paychecks from a part-time job. Then, title the next page, “Expenses.” On this page, create a table with three columns, titling them “Date,” “$ Spent,” and “Reflection,” respectively. Every time you make a purchase, fill out the date and amount spent in the appropriate columns of your expense diary. Afterwards, take some time to reflect on whether this expense was a need or want and if the money you spent was justified in respect to the product or service you received.
The Benefits of Keeping a Teen Expense Diary
Tracking spending and reflecting on prior expenses can be immensely powerful in understanding spending habits and making informed adjustments. Budgeting helps teens recognize the difference between buying necessities and spending money on frivolous items. Teens will also be more disciplined with their spending once they are aware of the trends of their current financial habits. Examining spending habits can enable teens to make necessary changes to their expenses and become more financially self-aware.
What’s Next?
After using your teen expense diary for several weeks, take a look at all of your expenses and see if the majority of them fit into a specific category (e.g., clothes, shoes, food, etc.). If there is one category in which many of your expenses fall in, then consider whether it is necessary to be spending most of your money on a certain category. For example, if most of your purchases this month were on clothes, reflect on whether all of these expenses were absolutely necessary or if you can cut back on buying too many clothes in the future. Alternatively, you can also create a monthly budget plan that splits up your budget into categories. For example, such a plan could split your budget into 25% for clothes, 20% for food, 15% for other miscellaneous items, and 40% for savings.
Keeping a teen expense diary helps teenagers effectively budget their savings and sets them up for financial success and awareness in the future. Recording expenses can have a multitude of benefits that lead to a greater sense of financial responsibility. Take the first step today and consider creating your own expense diary, or informing others about this idea!
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