A Low-Effort Household Account Book for Hard Workers - July 2024 (Part 1)

Easy! Introducing a Simple Household Account Book

Starting this month, I have introduced a simple household account book. It is created using the custom category feature in Money Forward ME.

Basically, the following 5 items are scheduled to be listed every month as permanent items.

• 1. Housing Expenses

• 2. Food Expenses

• 3. Daily Necessities

• 4. Entertainment Expenses

• 5. Other

Additionally, the following 2 items may be listed as additional items when necessary.

• 6. Special Expenses

• 7. Cash/Card

Compared to my previous household account book, which had a total of 12 items last month in June, this simple version has reduced the number of items by about 5 to 7.

Simple Household Account Book: Permanent Items

These are items that are basically expected to occur every month.

With the change to a simple household account book, I have allocated monthly fixed and variable costs as follows.

• Fixed costs: Consolidated and recorded under (1) Housing expenses

• Variable costs: Recorded by category under (2) through (7)

(1) Housing expenses

Mortgage repayments and money used for the family are the main expenditure items. I also include taxes, communication costs, and subscription fees.

(2) Food expenses

I record personal dining out, convenience store purchases, and vending machine expenses here.

(3) Daily necessities

I record expenses for maintaining health and appearance, such as health, medical, grooming, and clothing costs.

(4) Entertainment expenses

I also record family entertainment, hobbies, and educational expenses like book purchases under this category.

The above (1) Housing expenses, (2) Food expenses, and (3) Daily necessities are positioned as "fixed costs + minimum variable costs," and are items that strongly imply minimum monthly living expenses. (2) Food expenses can likely be reduced slightly through daily frugality, but since it is only about 4,000 to 5,000 yen per month, I do not consider it a major area for savings. Regarding (3) Daily necessities, items like clothing do not occur every month, but I believe they can be reduced to some extent through daily frugality. As for other medical and health expenses, costs tend to increase in months when I visit the hospital or have prescriptions filled. At the moment, there is no other countermeasure besides being careful with daily health management. (4) Entertainment expenses is an item that strongly implies



discretionary spending

. Proper management of this category is the basic goal for reducing variable costs.

(5) Other

Basically, I record transportation costs, food expenses, and stamp duty used during work. Previously, since the amount used was generally refunded later through expense reimbursement, I did not distinguish between personal and business use. Also, since there are many cases where expenses are deposited at the same time as the monthly salary, it was difficult to clarify the relationship between income and expenditure, so I mixed them together. With the introduction of this simple household account book, I have decided to at least visualize the portion used for work among the expenditure items.

Simple Household Account Book Additional Items

These are items to be added as needed. There may be months where they do not occur.

6. Special Expenses

Basically, I plan to list expenses that occur occasionally.
This category is expected to cover costs such as replacing home appliances or expenses related to ceremonial occasions.

7. Cash/Card

This is an item I plan to use when cash or card payments occur that cannot be handled by items 1 through 6 above.
In this category, 'unidentified expenses' will likely be the most frequently used item.

So, how about you?

In this simple household account book as well, funds for asset formation are excluded from monthly household management.
Since they are transferred automatically as appropriate via settings like automatic bank transfers, individual monthly management is unnecessary.

In this regard, I recommend 'hands-off investing' as it can be continued without burden.This time, I introduced the general positioning of each item when introducing the simple household account book.

It has become literally simple and, I think, clearer and easier to see.
Since this has become long, I would like to introduce the expenditure status by item in the next article.

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