The monthly close: twenty minutes to see where your money went

Logging your expenses and never looking at them is half the work done and no result. The monthly close is the other half: twenty minutes, once, to turn a list of transactions into three or four decisions.

You don't need a ritual or a spreadsheet. You need six questions, in this order.

When

The first or second day of the following month, when the month has closed but you still remember what happened. Put it in the calendar as a twenty-minute event. If it depends on you remembering, it won't happen.

1. Is everything logged?

Before looking at a single number, check the month is complete. Three places where something is always missing:

• The last three days of the month. Those are the most-skipped.
• Cash. If you took money out of an ATM and there's no record of where it went, that's your hole.
• Automatic charges. You don't log them because you never touch them, which is exactly why they get forgotten.

An incomplete month will give you wrong answers to the five questions that follow, so this step doesn't get skipped.

2. How much came in, how much went out?

One number, not an analysis: did the month close positive or negative?

If it closed negative, the question of the month is already decided and it's "why?". If it closed positive, carry on.

3. Is there anything I don't recognise?

Go down the list looking for charges you can't explain. Two kinds almost always turn up:

• Subscriptions you don't use. This is the most profitable finding of the close: cancelled once, saved permanently.
• Duplicate or incorrect charges. Dispute them now, not in three months.

4. Which category moved?

Don't look at absolute amounts: look at the change against your recent months. A category that rose 40% is information; a category that's always the biggest tells you nothing new.

And when you find one that moved, the right question isn't "did I spend a lot?" but "was that an event or is it a trend?". Somebody's birthday is an event and needs no action. Three straight months of rising delivery is a trend, and does.

5. What's coming next month?

It's the only question of the close that looks forward, and it prevents most of the nasty surprises:

• Is there a big, foreseeable expense? Insurance, registration, tuition, a trip.
• How much of the card is already committed to instalments? The calculation is in interest-free instalments.
• Has any recurring charge gone up?

If next month is already loaded, you know it now instead of on the 20th.

6. What one change am I making?

One. Not five.

The close isn't for building a new plan every month: it's for correcting one thing. Cancel a subscription, cap a category, move the day you save on. One change a month is twelve changes a year, which is far more than anyone sustains after setting five in January.

If you share expenses, close together

In a two-person household, an individual close describes half a household. It's worth doing the first five points separately and the sixth together, with shared balances already up to date — which is the work that splitting household expenses takes off your hands.

In one line

Once a month, on the calendar: check everything is logged, see whether the month closed green, hunt for what you don't recognise, find which category moved and whether it's an event or a trend, look at what's coming, and make exactly one change.

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