As readers of personal finance blogs, I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of debt trackers, expense trackers and the like. I wanted tell you about an easy way to track things online that I discovered recently. I’m not sure where I initially heard of this idea, so unfortunately I can’t give credit where credit’s due, but here’s the deal:

1. Sign up for a free account at Expensr.
2. Create the appropriate number of accounts you’d like to track. I’m tracking my Chequing account, my Retirement savings, and both Long- and Short- Term savings accounts.
3. This is the part you have to be diligent about, as you’ll have to do this part manually: I enter my cash flow ins & outs for the week.
4. Expensr then calculates a nice pie chart that shows where my money is going.

That’s it. You have to ignore the Accounts listing on the left-hand side, as the amounts will look really strange. But since you’re just using the site for the handy tracking feature, it doesn’t actually matter. Here’s a look at my October 2007 spending patterns:

I find this method very useful, since I’m a visual person. You can also use Expensr to track things “normally” too, so again, you can see where your money’s going, and where you’re at, however I like it this way as it’s a little more simple. We all know how complicated things can get with debts and finances, so this allows you to simplify, and still keep things on track. And if any of you know where this idea originally came from, please let me know! I’d like to give him/her a shout out.

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