I guess I’ve gained a reputation for being some sort of militant expense tracker, which is fine by me because I believe it’s a great way to develop money consciousness and a wealth building mindset. Many people tell me that the idea of expense tracking sounds far too depressing or too obsessive to even try. I always tell them, How would you know unless you try?

I’ve been tracking my expenses for over a year with my own customized spreadsheet. In just a few minutes a day, I stay on top of how, where and what (in terms of cash or credit) I’m spending. I know when to cool spending for a certain category, and where I’ve been awesome about saving money. It’s easy, fast and painless.

Another vital step in wealth building is tracking your progress with financial goals, and I’ll be completely honest here: I need a lot of help in this category, as I’m sure most people do. I’ve tried a couple of techniques for goal tracking that never personally caught on. The problem was that my goal tracking attempts recorded post-spending for other things. Whereas my expense tracking influenced my purchases, my goal tracking didn’t give me real-time feedback to influence my saving, spending, or motivation to change my behavior.

That’s where our new affiliate MoneyPants can help.

For the past couple of days I’ve been playing around with the MoneyPants CashTrack program, and I’m impressed by a number of its features:

Setup and Instant Planning: As you setup your account, you’re asked to input all sources of income that you plan to receive (salary, dividend payment, alternative income streams) — an important step to see how much money you’re working with each month.

In addition, you’re asked to pick specific financial goals, stating exactly how much you would like to save, and a deadline for that goal. If you have an open-ended goal like retirement, that’s fine too. You can select how much money you want to put away for that goal each month. CashTrack then breaks down exactly how much money you need each month to reach your financial goals. [For those who need help setting financial goals, CashTrack can help walk you through those steps whenever you’re ready.]

Finally, you’re asked to classify categories of spending into needs and wants. For instance, among the list of expenses you’ve got Rent; Electricity; Cell phone; Internet; Wine, Beer, Spirits; Charity; Movies; Cosmetics; Clothes; Groceries; Health Insurance; etc. You make the distinction between what’s more important between rent vs. beer (or other customized categories), and you assign or estimate how much you spend for your needs and wants each month.

After inputting your income sources, financial goals, and typical monthly spending for needs and wants, CashTrack sets up a monthly budget for each of your financial goals and expenses. You now have a monthly spending plan for both your financial goals and expenses customized for your income!

Planned vs. Actual Feedback: CashTrack works like an income and expense tracker in that it allows you to record when you get paid, and when you spend money. As you record transactions, you get immediate visual feedback as to when you exceed planned income (a good thing) or planned spending for a certain category (a bad thing). There’s even the option of uploading QIF or CSV files from your bank or credit card company, however I recommend adding transactions individually.

One weakness of CashTrack is that there isn’t a column that allows you to distinguish between cash and credit purchases, or a descriptive field explaining which credit card you paid from. You can however add this information in the notes field of each transaction.

If you’re making credit card purchases to pay for needs and wants expenses, I recommend keeping a tally of how much you’ve put on your credit card and adding that value to your ‘œPay Off Debt’ goal to keep your debts and expenses in balance. It’s an extra step that will hopefully be remedied as MoneyPants improves CashTrack over time, but overall doesn’t diminish its budgeting power.

Structured Flexibility: If you find that needed expenses are taking up all of your income, you can adjust your financial goals to allow yourself spending as necessary. Conversely, if you have money sitting around after necessary expenses, you can boost money towards financial goals. CashTrack lets you see how much discretionary income you have available for goals or spending as you record transactions, thus giving you an idea of where you should put more or less money. In other words, if you have a tendency to give financial goals the shaft end of the deal, CashTrack lets you see that you’re putting more money towards dinners out instead of towards a down payment on a house.

Often times without a budgeting tool, we’re throwing money blindly towards goals and expenses. And of course, we may do this because we really don’t want to confront how much longer certain financial goals will take, or how much we’ll have to sacrifice for certain spending categories. Although budgeting involves a bit more work, discipline and sacrifice, it’s not an impossible task to undertake.

Click here for a free trial of CashTrack at MoneyPants. After 30 days, the cost is $9.95 a month, which isn’t too bad compared to some other budgeting programs.

Happy Budgeting!