Free guide / Money & expenses
See where this month’s money went
Turn a short transaction list into a spending picture. Separate transfers from expenses before asking where you could cut back.
Reviewed 2026-09-23 · No ElevateU membership needed
Choose your starting point
The guide is free; the tool feature you use may depend on your account. Open a tool’s introduction for the relevant capabilities and source documentation.
From idea to a useful result
- Work from a copy of your transactions with account numbers and personal identifiers removed.
- Label the period and currency. Identify income, expenses, refunds and transfers separately.
- Check the category totals against the original rows, then choose one category to investigate.
Try this
Use this fictional month in USD: income 2500; rent 900; groceries 240; transport 80; restaurant 60; transfer to my own savings account 200; grocery refund 20. Show net spending by category, total consumption expenses and cash remaining after the savings transfer. Explain each total. Do not treat the transfer as consumption or suggest investments.
What a useful result looks like
Housing 900; groceries 220 (240 − 20); transport 80; eating out 60. Consumption expenses: 1260. Cash after those expenses: 1240. Cash remaining after the 200 savings transfer: 1040. The transfer changes where your money sits, not how much you consumed.
Check the result
900 + 220 + 80 + 60 = 1260. 2500 − 1260 − 200 = 1040. This example is a spending review, not a full accounting statement.
Original illustrative teaching case. No external model run or product performance comparison is claimed.
Go further / Pro
Your monthly money review
A local spending reviewer that calculates labeled transactions, separates savings transfers and exports a summary CSV. Includes a worked month you can replace with your own rows. Includes reusable instructions, worked examples and an editable review sheet.
- Clean and classify
- Reconcile the totals
- Explain the month
- Build a next-month scenario
The task above is complete. The kit adds materials for repeating or extending the work. New paid subscriptions are not open yet.