Tracking

I like my new ritual in the morning with laundry: loading and ironing. It’s just nice to have less time idling in the morning. I also mopped the entire house. I’m good at it now. I could manage the time and energy well. I am so happy with my tidy house.

Cousin Aga came around 9. He brought with him electricity kit for my car. He took his time making himself at home. Toasting bread, preparing drinks, while I was busy in the computer. I read many online articles today. It was a bright day but pleasant weather. It’s just nice to stay in.

In the afternoon I got an idea to keep track of all my financial activities through a website so I can access the data from anywhere at anytime. I’ve tried many ways to have the discipline to monitor my finance for a period of time, at least, so I would have idea of my trend. I change life style almost totally so I also expect a significant impact on the financial trend.

I used Google search to find the best website that handles the financial management. I signed up to one but later I found a better one. Half month has passed. With the help of my online calendar and blog, I managed to recall what I did and spent! It’s incredible. It’s simple and easy, only the website page updated too slow. I think it’s because of the design. I really hope I could rely on this site.

Anyway, it’s a challenging activity to track down past expenses. How could I remember all? I remembered almost all big buys but needed to visualize each part of the house to recall what have added in the part. Like in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, bookshelf, and table, even fridge! It’s so easy to forget what I bought once the thing has been consumed or kept in a place. It took long to recall when the balance was still half. I could not track down half of my expenses? It couldn’t be… I squeezed my memory hard to come to a more likely balance. I managed eventually!

I’m surprised to know how much I have spent so far. I expect the expense of my life in Ubud is one-third of mine in Jakarta. It’s not! It’s close to only half. And I only reviewed my cash expenses. I also did payment through bank and credit card. Oh. I hope this is because I spent a lot for investment like buying cell phone and washing machine. I also had to buy more birthday presents this month. The first month review has shown scary figure. I shall review the expense of next month and the months after before evaluating my new life style.

Now I’m close to the answer why my friend who is single and lives in Ubud spends a lot. He also doesn’t know where the money gone when I wondered out loud how he could spend that much. The value of our money goes down slowly. He expressed the other day that having been in the ups and downs of business almost a decade, he now values $5 higher while he used to spend $50 without thinking twice. I told him that I feel the same. Not that we don’t have the money but we value it more. We would only spend for something worth the value. No more impulsive buying. In my case, the value is right, but I could still impulsively buy more than I need. Another habit to fix.

It’s not a bad Sunday. I could consider myself productive.

Photo of paths in Como Shambala.