The Breakdown of our Annual Money Audit

And how to do one yourself

Every January, I do something that sounds tedious but has become a fun rabbit-hole type ritual: I print out our Amex statements, grab a highlighter, and go through every single charge from the past year. And when I say I go through them, I mean if I don’t immediately know what it is, I’m sleuthing it out.

I do this for our family. And I do it for Simplified. Both sides. Personal and professional.

Bryan and I have been doing some version of this for years now, and it’s become as much a part of our January as taking down the Christmas tree. We treat our family like a business when it comes to finances, and this audit is how we make sure we’re actually spending money on things that matter to us.

This year, I thought I’d walk you through exactly how we do it, what we found, and how you can do an Annual Money Audit yourself.

Why January (and why bother)

Here’s the thing about money: it’s one of the few things you can actually control. You can’t control the economy. You can’t control inflation. You can’t control what’s happening in the news. But you can control whether you know where your dollars are going.

The audit isn’t about restriction or punishment. It’s about alignment. Making sure our spending reflects our actual values and not just our autopilot habits.

Bryan keeps a spreadsheet with our trailing month-over-month spending for the last five years. He can tell you how much we spend every month on average. Our year-over-year changes. Our three-year trailing average. The man knows our numbers.

But even with all that tracking, you’d be surprised what slips through. Which is why we do this deep-dive every January.

The mindset shift that makes this bearable

Before I walk you through the process, I need you to know this: I am an emotional person. I’m emotionally tied to my work. I’m emotionally tied to my job as a mom and wife. And I’m emotionally tied to data about both of those things.

So when Bryan and I sit down to look at money together, my first instinct is to get defensive. If he mentions how much we spent at Target, I want to fire back: Well, you’re not the one buying the shoes the kids outgrew. The birthday gifts. The printer paper. The toilet paper. IYKIK 😵‍💫

But I’ve learned to tell myself something that changes everything: this is data. Just data. It’s not a judgment on me as a person or a mom or a business owner. It’s information. A snapshot of a given point in time.

It’s like getting bloodwork done. Maybe your cholesterol comes back high and you want to freak out. But it’s just information. You can decide what to do with it. That mindset shift has made all the difference for us. We can look at the numbers as teammates instead of adversaries. Now, here’s how we do it in six simple steps.