# Starting to track your money mid-year (or after giving up once)

> Almost nobody starts on 1 January, and almost everyone quits once. How to start again without rebuilding what you never logged, and without the guilt.

_Habits · Published 2026-09-02_

Almost nobody starts tracking their money on 1 January, and almost everybody quits
at least once. Both are normal, and neither is a problem — except for what people
do next.

What sinks the second attempt isn't a lack of discipline. It's two wrong decisions
that nearly everyone makes on the way back.

## Mistake 1: trying to reconstruct what you never logged

It's the first thing anyone thinks of: "I'll start, but first let me enter the
three months I missed." And that's where the attempt dies, because reconstructing
three months is an entire afternoon of boring work before you've seen a single
benefit.

**Start today with today.** The current month will be incomplete and it doesn't
matter: you were going to discard it as a reference anyway.

The one exception is if you need a base number for budgeting or for calculating
your emergency fund. In that case reconstruct, but **after** you've started and
only as far as it comes easily — the method is in
[how to rebuild a month of spending](/en/blog/rebuild-a-month-of-expenses).

## Mistake 2: coming back with the complete system

The second attempt usually starts more ambitious than the first: fifteen
categories, budgets on all of them, tags, two currencies and a weekly review. It's
the natural reaction — "this time I'll do it properly" — and it's exactly why it
lasts less than the first.

What survives:

- **Three categories**, not fifteen. Fixed, variable necessities, and everything
  else. You add more when they're overflowing, not before. The criterion is in
  [how many categories you need](/en/blog/how-many-expense-categories).
- **No budgets in month one.** A cap without data is an invented number that will
  tell you you failed.
- **One new thing per month.** Month 1, logging. Month 2, recurring expenses.
  Month 3, one cap. Not all three at once.

## The first thirty days, concretely

**Day 1.** Enter the recurring expenses: rent, utilities, subscriptions,
instalments. It's half an hour and it handles half your month permanently. It's in
[recurring expenses](/en/blog/recurring-expenses-done-right).

**Days 1 to 30.** Log each expense when you pay it. Nothing else. Don't look at any
chart, don't build any budget, don't analyse anything. The only goal of month one
is that the month ends up complete.

**Day 30.** Now look. It's your first real month, and it's the first time you'll
see a number that means something. The six questions of the
[monthly close](/en/blog/monthly-money-review) apply here.

**Day 31.** One change. One.

## If you've quit before: find out where it broke

It's worth two minutes, because the breaking point is almost always one of these
four, and each has a different fix:

| It broke at… | The fix |
|---|---|
| Logging every day | Recurring entries + dictating the variable ones |
| Categorising | Fewer categories, and an "Other" that actually exists |
| Shared expenses | Track them as a shared balance, not as loose expenses |
| Looking at the numbers | A scheduled close, not "when I remember" |

If you broke at logging, adding more categories won't help. And vice versa.

## About guilt

An expense log exists to support decisions, not to make you feel bad every time
you open the app. And guilt has a very concrete, very measurable effect: it makes
you stop logging. Someone who has logged for a year without judging themselves has
infinitely more information than someone who logged three perfect months and quit.

The incomplete months you left behind don't need fixing. They need leaving.

## In one line

Start today with today and reconstruct nothing; in month one just log and don't
look; begin with three categories and no budgets; and if you've quit before, work
out which of the four points broke before trying the same thing again.

## Download

- iPhone (App Store): https://apps.apple.com/app/id6758053806
- Android (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kesef.app

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