Tips for recording your expenses

Have you read any personal financial planning (理财) book before? Most books have a common topic about recording your expense. I followed that also. But it doesn't work! No matter I install an App or write in on a notebook or keep my receipts and record it  later. This is because human nature ---Lazy.
Another possible reason is: some may think that, it doesn't worth the effort to record $1 expense. It is very troublesome record every single expense.
Eventually, for whatever reasons, high chance that this method will fail.

Few years back, I found out a solution: just record whatever balance in your bank is enough. This will be the closing balance for the month and also the opening balance of the following month. Taking "closing" - "opening"(which equal to movement) will be your expenses for the month. As shown below:

Beside this, if you can work harder to record "Big expense/income for the month (e.g. buy LV bag, strike 4D )" plus "fix expenses(e.g. Children school fee, Join-Account contribution); you can more and less gauge and manage your $ already.

If you have investment, just add that to the movement.

If you like to keep cash in biscuit can or your case-dough(私房钱), you can add lines beneath Opening and Closing. Just make sure this file is inaccessibility from your wife. :0

You may use the following Excel and customize to your need. Give it a try. It works for me. I have been recording for 4 years already.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ktyuhe43af3aqr6/PersonalExpense.xlsx