'I'm terrible with money. Here's what happened when I tracked my spend for a week.'

I'm not good with money.

I have two modes: "I won't spend anything at all" or "Money is there to be spent!" There is no grey area with me. I am one extreme or the other and, unsurprisingly, this hasn't lent itself to forming any kind of financial stability in my life.

Also? I just don't understand finance. I've tried; I've read books, listened to podcasts – but I just become overwhelmed. They talk about fees and investments and I want to wail, "Look, I just need somewhere small to start!"

So, I decided on my small place to start.

But before anything else, watch these 4 money hacks that don't cut out your daily cup of coffee! Story continues after video.

My main issue is that I have a full-time job, a good income, and yet I live paycheck-to-paycheck. I have a savings account, but in terms of my everyday account? Each time pay day rolls around, I'm breathing a sigh of relief. And I just can't work out where all the money is going. I decided, in the interest of starting small, I would, for an entire week, track every single cent I spent and see what the results told me.

Here's what I learned.

1. Accountability works.

In the interest of producing authentic results, I told myself to spend like I normally would. But knowing I was going to have to write down what I bought had me second-guessing and hesitating at every purchase. This was definitely new.

I don't know if it's a millennial thing or a "me thing", but I have a terrible sense of urgency attached to every idea I have. If I, on a whim, think, "I should get bangs", you better believe I'll have bangs by the end of the day. Unfortunately, a lot of my spontaneous ideas ("I want to change my entire wardrobe aesthetic!") involve spending money. Having a level of accountability wasn't something I'd ever imposed on myself before and I couldn't deny it worked.

2. But it's exhausting.

Tracking everything I spent was exhausting. I couldn't see it being sustainable in the long term. Of course, it might be for some people, who are detail-orientated like that. And I won't deny it’s good to keep an eye on how much you're spending – checking in with your bank account every few days, maybe. But writing down the $1 chocolate bar I bought from the social club at work felt like a level of obsessiveness that veered into the "unhealthy" territory. (Plus, I don't want to be shamed for my chocolate addiction. Let me have my 3pm fix, thanks.)

3. The little things add up.

But, that being said - things like that $1 chocolate add up. One day I had a craving for grapes, so I went and got grapes. And there we have $1 one day, $6 another – all just on little things. I was pretty eye opening to see how that added up.

Funnily enough, what I ended up doing was Googling why I might crave certain things (apparently, craving sugar = lacking sleep). I'm not saying all little costs can be solved by Googling and adjusting parts of your life (i.e. going to bed earlier in my case), but I like the idea of tracing the roots of my cravings, food or otherwise, to see if I could source the reason and stop the incidental spending at its core.

4. Small steps are key.

At the beginning of the year, in a fit of "new year, new me", I reviewed my bills and culled anything "unnecessary." So, the bills it left me with, when I looked over them, were essential ones – think rent, insurances. I couldn't cull anymore. The purpose of this week was to see where my money was going, and I could see that bills were a big chunk of it.

With no avenue to cull anymore, my logical thought process was, "maybe I need to shop around and see if I can get cheaper services."

And then I spiraled.

I thought about how many I'd need to review, the processes I'd need to undergo to change providers. My "small step" suddenly bloomed to a massive "big picture" and I became overwhelmed. I almost wanted to quit.

This is the problem I've encountered with finances – you can simplify the language all you want, but there's no denying that financial freedom is an ongoing process with seemingly endless steps. I've found it easy in the past to ignore my finances because fixing things was a project that seemed too daunting to undertake. That was why I had embarked on this "small step" approach in the first place.

So, in the moment of panicking about bills, I stopped and took a deep breath. 

Yes, the bill situation was something I would have to review. But right then, in that moment, I was just tracking my finances for a week. That was the focus. It can be really easy with finances to try to do everything at once in an effort to get the quickest results. That, in my experience, is a sure-fire way to feeling overwhelmed and disappointed.

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I remembered my purpose at the beginning – breaking things into small steps. I told myself, if this expense tracking was one step, I could make reviewing one insurance the next step. Just one. Not all of them, not all at once. Just little manageable things.

I know many people reading this will think that a lot of my conclusions are obvious. That my "epiphany" veers into the "well, duh" territory. That's fine. But I also think there might be people out there like me who find money extremely difficult and who might take away from my story, if not any tips, a sense of solace.

Sometimes I feel like everyone has it sorted out, especially when it comes to their money, and I'm starting my financial journey miles behind where I should be at my age. It can make you feel like a failure or a "bad adult" – I am neither of these things. 

I am learning, that's what I am. And I am, hopefully, not alone in this.

For more from Shaeden Berry, you can find her on Instagram @berrywellthanks.

Feature Image: Supplied.

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