Hi
Like yourself I wanted to start keeping tabs on spends and did a small bit of business studies in college (but not enough to warrant know how to do accountancy proper) so I set one up a diary as you call it, recently (since Jan) using excel and did it on a monthly rather than weekly basis. I track everything I'm spending on. I update it daily or at least every two days.
Topics which I did are food & groceries (inclu detergents and toiletries etc as I always lump them into one shop), lunches (if eat at work), health & beauty (eg trips to beauty & hair salons), hobbies (eg in my case tai chi), hair products (as that's quite expensive in it's own right for those high end products that only seem to work on taming my mane!), taxi's (I don't drive and use public transport. Found out I spent way too much money in past when being lazy - by charting it all realise how much I spent and it was horrendous eek!), entertainment (incl any dvd's, cd's, gig tickets, nights out, ie drinks & food), clothes & footwear, holiday/travel (incl any items bought for travel eg extra's like luggage or holiday specific items, flights, hotels etc) , visa (for the amts I'm paying back on card), medical expenses, home (for bits and pieces you buy or want to buy), home service/repairs, xmas/special occassions, sundry.
I totalled them, and averaged on a per month basis overall and also per item total & averaged to keep a track on how much average is spent on food per yr.
Then did a utility bills in a seperate sheet and included esb, gas, ntl, mobile ph, phone, mortgage (incl mortage - tax relief), tv license (in my case yearly) vhi, life insurance, mortgage protection insurance, contents insurance (yearly and put in it's renewal mth) and apartment management fee (for me on a quarterly basis).
Then totalled them and averaged as above.
Then put in total net salary and took all expenditure (combined totals from both types of bills and spending) from salary.
I also since did this for this last 2 years on some digging out of credit and current a/c statements. Alas I shredded and dumped some receipts for goods that I paid in cash I bought and food etc so not kept a good track of some topics. So some of those are a wild guess and I went on at least a 100 or more on the upper side of estimate if any, if blank stuck in 100. Yes eep!
Found out quite a few things out from my spending pattern - some good and some not good at all and some really bad spending.
It has made me able to visualise where I need to cut back for the future and where I can try and to save and to reduce my though do-able over a few months credit card bill which without all the levies (pension etc yeah I'm another public sector worker) would have been cleared off that much quicker. [sigh!]
Now how to draw up a proper budget from all it on, what I'm allowed to spend in future per topic (heading) per month isn't as far as I've got as I'm finding I'm spending on average different amts (eg even in food & groceries) but it's a start. What I am doing might be overkill or not maybe not even enough, that I'm not sure yet.
Excel is the way to go rather than pen and paper as it's easily updated and you can add or remove topics/sections which I do when I remember new one's to add in. I got some topics or headings if you will from a public service credit union book on budgeting and I think on the financial regulator and looked online.
If you drive add petrol, car tax, car insurance etc.
I think monthly is better as a lot of bills come in monthly or bi-monthly, quarterly and yearly rather than weekly. Also have been able to track rises in utlity bills better now and also I've marked which are estimates and which aren't.
Hope this helps. I know it's not exactly what you were looking for but thought it might help.
