Goal #1 - Money Money Money

I'm awesome at budgeting. Seriously. I can spend hours calculating the averages per month of every conceivable expense and fitting it all into a neat little chart that shows exactly what is coming in and what should be going out. However, what should be going out never seems to match with what does go out. Because I am what is known as a hardcore fritterer.

A fritterer is someone who spends a lot of money in small amounts, so it doesn't seem like a lot of money is being spent. A coffee here, a magazine there. Some Tic Tacs while buying milk, a new type of Black & Green's chocolate that I notice on the shelf at the local hippie shop while I'm stocking up on rolled oats and chia seeds. A $5 mascara in a throw out bin conveniently located while lining up at Chemist Warehouse waiting to pay for my vitamins. I think you get the point - I piss away a lot of money on fleeting, pointless, impulse purchases.

So my first goal for Year of the Tight Arse is to rein in the frittering. For the past few months I have been using an app called Toshl (there are loads of expense tracking apps out there, this is just one of them) to keep track of my spending. I haven't been religious about it, but just noting down for a couple of weeks here and there everything I buy. In one 7 day period I spent $36.70 on coffee. COFFEE. In the same period I spent $30.30 on lunch, and I have no idea how that happened, as I take my lunch to work almost every day. Other expenses in that week:

• magazines - $16.90
• macarons - $10.00 (note how they get their own category!)
• downloads - $14.18
• beauty products - $30.21
• cakes - $8.45 (again - own category!)
• water - $14.80

So you can see why what's in the budget doesn't match up with what's left in my hand at the end of each fortnight.

I haven't entirely figured out the best way to go about this. I am half-considering doing a summing up post each fortnight (as that's my pay cycle) of what I spent money on that I didn't need. Maybe seeing it written down might spur me to reduce that list each time. But I don't want to bore people senseless with lists of stuff. I don't know...

Are you a fritterer? Any tips to avoid impulse purchases greatly appreciated!