do you keep track of you rincome and expenses?  

Yes, of course I did my account keeping to keep tracking my family "cashflow" account. My husband will check and supervise that account every week. From this simple book keeping, I erudite a lot from my husband about, General Ledger, Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet, as well.

Actually, I'm not from account background, but my husband taught me very serious when it comes to family account. I enjoy learning it. Once loved doing it, no longer a lazy job to do it ....... I enjoy doing it, at least I can know the right "deficit" figure to my family monthly account.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of income and expenditure. There are several very good free budget templates for Excel which you can download, though it's not too difficult to create your own.

If you don't have Microsoft Office, you maybe have MS Works, which has a spreadsheet (though it's not as powerful as Excel). Works also has a Home Budget template (under Financial Worksheets) into which you can enter income and your expected and actual expenditure under convenient headings.

If you are not familiar with spreadsheets, it is worth learning a little about them because they take the headache out of all the calculations. Once set up, a spreadsheet will automatically add a column of figures, subtract expenditure from income to show your balance or what money you should have at the end of the month, calculate your tax liability and much, much more.

I also use spreadsheets for making to do lists, cataloguing books and CDs, keeping track of my MyLot earnings, recording my Peak Flow Readings (for asthma control), listing my eBay auctions and calculating shipping costs for the items and many other things.

I know what you mean when you said it is tiring. It is even more depressing when you know that your expenses are greater than your income.

Once a month I compute my net worth. I'm no expert in accounting, but I'm happy enough with simple calculations; that is, total assets minus liabilities. Naturally, income and expenses come into play. I just want to have a general idea of where I stand financially, how I'm doing with my investments, what can I afford, etc etc.

I use Microsoft Excel and I jot down all my available money and expenses like what you would see in a passbook bank account.

Like there's a date column, a deposit column, a withdrawal column, then a comment column so I can remember like if I paid a huge amount of money, I know who I paid it too.

Same goes to my checking account. I know the bank issues statements, but I do the same thing like above but there's an extra column for check number so that I can monitor it.

I also keep a calendar (the one with boxes), and I put due dates and sometimes if I don't have time to put in numbers in my computer, I write it down there, so I could refer to it when I have time.

I used to, I write every expenses to the smallest amount. But then I got tired and since my husband hold his own money and his own expenses, I mean, what's the use. Now I only write the necessary expenses such as housekeeper salary, electricity etc.

I am managing our finances in our household and I dont keep track of income and expenses. Income is same every month, so I know what we have and I dont really keep track of the expenses. At the beginning of the month I withdraw the sum we need for the month and divide it: train fares - clothes-holidays-gas for the car - and groceries. We always end up with some money saved at the end of the month which goes to the savings book straight away.