It All Adds Up?

I have been keeping a most accurate record of my finances since the 1st April and am jolly glad I have too as if I had continued on in the same old happy-go-lucky way I had been it could – no, undoubtedly would – have ended up disastrously before long. As it is, I am now gradually clearing the backlog of bills and by the end of this year hope to be on a much stronger footing.

Now I have started this system I shall continue to follow it – although in the beginning the idea was just to get some idea of where my money was going. It has proved to be so useful I only marvel why I hadn’t thought it out before and, by filling out the analysis sheet daily, it is child’s play to tot it up at the end of the month (did have to buy myself a calculator to do this with though, because I’m not very good at `sums’. It just `sounds’ rather complicated but it isn’t at all, neither is it very time consuming or I wouldn’t be able to keep it up. I just have two exercise books going:-

• The Bank/Cash book, and

• My daily breakdown book in which I jot down everything I spend.

It is from this daily book that I transfer the figures to the appropriate columns on the Analysis Sheet each night before I go to bed. It just takes a couple of minutes each night and I know exactly where I stand.

In the first two months I have been running this system I used only one column on the Analysis sheet for `Household Sundries’ but in June’s sheet I have made two. I have also made a breakdown of the two previous months on the back of each sheet. This was because I was putting everything in that column that didn’t belong in any of the others, but have split it in two to show real household sundries i.e. soap (yes, I DO use some now and then, no matter what you might hear!), toilet rolls, cleaning materials etc., and the second column for General Sundries in which I put the other items such as the calculator I bought and a pair of garden shears, also the flowers for the table and the bedding plants etc. I think I must be doing it right because it seems to balance at the end of the month, in that the money I have spent, added to the cash I have left in hand and the balance at the Bank total up to the sum of actual monies I have received that month.

Must get on with some work soon I suppose. I have been told we are having a word processor and I am to be trained as the Operator for it, after which I have to train the others! Keep my fingers crossed – after all, I may know what I am doing, but it is sometimes difficult to explain it CLEARLY to others. Oh well, no doubt it will all come out in the wash, which reminds me, I really MUST sort some clothes out for the launderette.

Grace Russ - 1st June 1983