Caring about finances took a giant step forward this week with the adoption of the goal to track everything I spend for a week. It’s been quite fun… especially since other people are doing it as well and many of us are sharing our private money lives. Someone said that money is the last taboo… it’s sort of true. We may know who our friends are sleeping with and yet have no idea how much money they make, how much debt they have, how much they have saved up, etc. And yet, I personally have no reason to keep it hidden.

As I track my spending, I’ve found that becoming more conscious of my spending makes me include it in my aesthetic. I don’t know how to put it exactly. Do you know how, when you go into an elevator, and there are already people in it, you sort of take a part of the elevator that balances it out… that makes it seem “right”. I think that’s an aesthetic act. Same when sitting down in a movie theater… part of your choice of seats has to do with the preference for where you want to sit, and part of it has to do with making sure you’re not going to block anyone if you can, and giving people space. If it’s packed, you can sit right next to a stranger… however, if it’s not packed, you might prefer to give strangers at least a couple seats of personal space. When you organize books on a shelf or magazines on a table, you place them in a certain way. On the other hand, when you’re not paying attention, you might throw a book onto the couch, or jam mail into a junk drawer. That’s how I treat spending typically… I jam my money into junk drawers and don’t really think about if I’m spending too much or too little, focusing instead on enjoying the by-products of money. However, now that I’m paying attention to it, I’ve been treating my spending more like organizing books on a shelf, or sitting down in a half-crowded theater. I don’t want to spend too much on one day, and I like to keep the total spending for each day nicely balanced in relation to the days next to it. If I spend a lot on one day, I seem to make sure to spend less on the days following, and if I spend very little on one day I want to spend more on others. It’s nothing scientific or logical, it’s merely aesthetic to me. I want the trail of my spending to look nice. That’s the only way I can put it at the moment.

To help with this, I’ve added a sheet to my spreadsheet that tracks the total amount I spend each day in relation to the amount I “make” each day (averaged over all days). And I’ve created formula to tell me if I’m living within my means for that day, as well as for all days together. And I’ve created a formula to tell me if I’m living within 80% of my income so that I can make sure to save and give money away accordingly. This information feels like adding new instruments to the orchestra of my finances… it makes the spending feel more right, and helps me know when the song is going well versus when it sounds bad.