Whether that’s a matter of cash you’ve been storing under the mattress, subscriptions you’ve been keeping on autopay, or, say, that couch you put on a monthly installment plan, you’ll need to take full stock of your expenditures. “Once you figure out where all that money is, you should put it in a spreadsheet, write it on a piece of paper, track it in some tool or application that feels safe for you, and visit that record as often as possible,” Liersch explains. “Based on our research at Wells Fargo, this is something many people don’t do — they just don’t know where their money is. Pulling together this record will help illuminate how, exactly, you’re spending — and in turn, what you can alter.”
