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Home > Got to do better tracking my credit-card spending

Got to do better tracking my credit-card spending

September 11th, 2013 at 09:53 pm

It's been a busy summer, full of more spending than we typically do (mostly because we decided to use our "travel" budget item to have home-based fun this summer). In addition, we're using more than one credit card to maximize rewards (both for bonuses and everyday points).

So it's not altogether shocking that my math hasn't been coming out right every time. Typically what I do is keep a budget line item for paying off each credit card twice a month. When we make a purchase, I add the amount to the line item and subtract it from whatever bucket it's coming out of. Then, twice a month, I double-check the account online to make sure my amount matches, and send off a payment for the balance in full.

Only these past few months, there have been several incidents where the amounts have been different. Not wildly so; I'll be $20 short on my budget than what I owe. And sometimes it's the other way around, and I've got a bigger number in my budget than the actual account balance.

It's never that I see unfamiliar purchases in there; everything looks in order. I just can't seem to get my totals to jibe on a regular basis.

It might even out in the end, but it's frustrating, because I don't always know where to take the extra money from, or allocate the unneeded money to. I might cover a deficit out of my (admittedly large) budget surplus that's usually used for debt or savings. I may decide that I probably double-calculated a carshare rental, and add the money back there. But it bothers me to haphazardly do this, even though it doesn't really affect me significantly. It just makes me feel like I don't actually have a handle on our spending.

Yesterday, between two cards, I was about $60 short. I had $50 coming to me for spending money, so I wiped that out and took the other $10 from our budget surplus. I figure it's my fault the numbers aren't adding up, so I should pay for it this time.

That was a great motivator, even though it's annoying to suddenly have no spending money until Friday. So I started a new practice: On each line item that will eventually become a payment to a credit card, I'm going to list all the purchases that comprise that amount, and keep adding to the description until it's time to pay the bill.

Another thing I'm going to do is not add "pending authorizations" to my line item until they actually come through. With the carshare, the amount they actually take out sometimes adjusts up or down from the pending authorization depending on whether we drove more or fewer miles than the standard estimate. With restaurants, what if I scribble the wrong "with tip" amount on my copy and there's a discrepancy when it comes through? There might be other potentially variable purchases too.

To remind myself that I still need to add pending purchases once they become final, I'll put those with a question mark on the line item. So this is what a typical line item used to look like:

Chase Freedom (need to set up) (75.20)

This is what it looks like now:

Chase Freedom (need to set up) (Hrcr 26.21, SebJoe 12.61, DGD 31.99, Hrcr 4.39, Hrcr? + Copperpot?) (75.20)

That way, I can always know whether I've accounted for a purchase, so I won't double-bill (or not bill) for something, and then be confused later and unable to backtrack.

It's only a bit more work and visual clutter on my budget, and hopefully it'll help me get control of our credit-card spending again.

3 Responses to “Got to do better tracking my credit-card spending”

  1. Kiki Says:
    1378933980

    I do the exact same thing as your second line. Admittedly it is a lot easier with only one person on the card but then i know which pot of money it needs to come from: vacation, car maintenance, health savings account etc.

  2. creditcardfree Says:
    1378934856

    It's true that credit card purchases can be harder to track. I hope the new system works for you!

  3. Miz Pat Says:
    1378939743

    I generally track it on my checking account and then have the credit card company take the amount out of checking, so i'm never late.

    However, I don't have a bunch of little budget allocations (except in my credit union savings), so I don't have the same problem.

    I think I would prefer to have your type of problem, because I've recently gone over all my savings and realized some of it went down. Part of it is because of a lot of car repairs, but still. I'm not saving enough.

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