Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Track your cash spending

Whether or not you use a financial tool to track your finances, this week’s tip—shared by nekodojo—will help you keep track of your cash; no more wondering where it’s gone. :)

I use Quicken for tracking my finances. Luckily my bank has everything linked up electronically, but the one thing my bank can’t do for me is to tell me where the cash has gone, once I get it from the machine.

But, lately I have been using my RTM to keep track of cash that I spend, so it can get entered into Quicken sometime later, when I have the program open. I simply enter one new item on the “Cash” list, with today as the due date. Then, when I finally enter them in Quicken, I mark them completed.

These entries can be short and sweet like “Cafe 15 ^today”. Or they could be longer, such as when I charge lunch on my card and then collect cash from friends (also known as “ATM by proxy”), – these might look like “Brunos Visa 45.38 Dave 15 Devin 15 ^today”. Sometimes I also enter a quick balance entry, like “On hand 43 ^today” to tell myself how much I had at a certain time.

Thanks for sharing this tip, nekodojo! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.