It is highly unlikely that all the expenses made during the festive season were worth making in the first place. This is the time of the year when unavoidable expenses are bound to upset your budget plans, and you can do little about it. However, I have made it a point to have a look at the expenses every year, once the festive period is over. The best time for a festive expense review is when the dust settles and your regular day-to-day life resumes. This exercise has over the years given me a good understanding of me and my family’s spending patterns. It has also helped me to find out where we have overspent and which expenses were unnecessary or could have been minimised.
What I did was quite simple actually. I have been maintaining an app to specifically record all my expenses which gives me a break up of all my spending, category wise. Earlier I used to look at my credit card bills and statements and wondered where I spend all this money have. Now I look at the app and identify exactly where I overspent. One can do productive expense review with old fashioned notebooks too.