I’m now tracking all of my monthly expenses in a MS Excel spreadsheet. Ok, so it isn’t Quicken, but the real goal was to track my finances and expenses, not to learn or use Quicken, so this goal is complete.

I now have a very accurate picture every month of where my money is going and ideas for saving, as well as reasonable baselines for unavoidable expenses (e.g. energy, groceries, etc.) which is very helpful when making decisions about life changes – for example, now I’m in a much better position to compare cost of living levels if, for example, I took a new job in a different city.

I’ll use this information to help me reach my other goals, like saving to buy/build my own house one day. This was well-worth spending a little time getting organized with my receipts and building a simple Excel spreadsheet to track it all.

Good luck to everyone else who wants to do this!