How I Track My Clothing Budget

Now that I’ve been putting my clothing budgets on here for a while now, a quite few people have asked how I track my clothing budget. I didn’t want to share for a while because honestly, my system wasn’t that great. Aka, I didn’t really have one.  I would just add everything up at the end of the month and cross my fingers.

If that’s not a terrible method, I don’t know what is.

So it was time to refine.

For anyone who knows me well, you know I’m an excel/google doc nerd. So I set up a google doc that I could access from everywhere. Here’s what it looks like.

And here’s how it works.

Each month, on the the left side, I’ll keep track of that month’s purchases. As soon as I buy something, I’ll put in the product and price. I’ll also sometimes put in the link if I want to be able to quickly reference it later. Once I’ve received an item and decided to keep it, I’ll highlight it blue. If I decide to not keep it, I’ll delete it from the list.

 

Now on the right, All my purchases from the left will be added up and be kept track of by month. Plus, I’ve set it up so they’ll be factored into my overall budget. That way, I can see how I’m doing overall throughout the year.

Once the month is over, I’ll move everything from the month over to the “2018” tab. Then I’ll make sure to update that month’s “Monthly Total” to make sure it’s referencing the correct cells in 2018. I know it can seem a little complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really easy!

It’s been wondering in helping me track my clothing budget and trying to make sure I stay in line. It’s great because I can see what my total may be before I even receive the items. So if I see that I may need to return, or list a few items on poshmark), I can do that.

Want to try out my system for yourself? I made a cleaned up copy of my spreadsheet just for you. Just use this link and make sure to make a copy of the spreadsheet for yourself.

Let me know how your budgeting tracking goes and don’t forget to stop by next week to check out my March clothing budget! I’m going to hosting a clothing budget link up for the first time and I would love for you all to join in!