A free spending tracker that starts before you buy.
Three days from The Spending Journal, free. Most spending trackers record what you bought. This one records the urge first: what it is, what set it off, what it costs in hours of your own pay, and how hard the pull is. Then it waits until tomorrow.
Download the free PDFNo email needed. Print on A4 or US Letter, or fill it in on a tablet.
What is in the free PDF
- How this journal works. One page. Why impulse spending is not a maths problem.
- The Standing Position. Including your real hourly rate, so prices turn into hours. Fill it in before the first log.
- A worked day. One filled-in evening at an example hourly rate of £14.
- Three day logs. Day 01 to Day 03, exactly as they appear in the full journal.
Do the opening page before the first log. It takes five minutes, and the logs mean very little without it.
Why only three
The money you did not spend is invisible unless something adds it up. Over thirty days the running total becomes a line you can see. Three days will not show you that line. They will show you whether writing the urge down first is something you will actually do.
The method behind it is free to read: the 24-hour rule, explained in full.
If the three work for you
The full journal carries on from exactly where the sample stops: 30 days, four weekly checkpoints, the Hold Line and the Verdict. It is a printable PDF on Etsy · paperback on Amazon, and the whole Etsy shop is 30% off until 25 October. How the full journal works.
A self-help record, not financial advice or a debt-management plan. If you are struggling with debt, a free debt advice service can help in a way a journal cannot. The interior is written and laid out with AI assistance, then reviewed and checked. Quotations are public domain. Free for personal use; please share the link to this page rather than the file. All our free samples.