An important part of budgeting is knowing how and where you spend your money.  What are your spending habits and patterns?  Do you spend on a lot of takeaways?  Takeaways are one of the small expenses that tend to accumulate into a rather sizeable chunk of money spent.

A suggestion is to always download your bank statement of the previous month during the first week of the current month and go through all the transactions.  You don’t have to remember all the transactions BUT you should be able to at least identify and take account of all your transactions.  This will also help identify any unauthorised or fraudulent debits and activities from your account .  Always aim to report any suspicious activities as quick as possible to avoid any escalating debits.

Also make a point to archive your statements for any further referencing.  A suggestion is to save the statements yearly and monthly.  Get into the practice of downloading and analysing your statements until it becomes a habit.  This will definitely go a long way in helping your identify your spending habits good or bad and help correct the bad ones.  Below is an example of how to save and archive your downloaded bank statements.