Ever find that even though you’re expected to track your expenses monthly, your spending habits are mostly monthly? For example, groceries, gasoline, meals, etc., tend to be spent on a daily/ weekly basis. Only things like rent, insurance, phone bills, credit card bills, etc., tend to be spent on a monthly basis. So it’s a hassle every month to total things up. Maybe this spreadsheet will help.

Well, this isn’t exactly a solution to that problem, but it might help you to at least track your weekly spending habits. What’s more, I’ve added columns for 13-, 26, 52-, and 104-week MAs (Moving Averages) and a graph of these, so that you can see patterns in medium- and long-term spending.

Here’s the weekly spending spreadsheet. It’s in the free ZohoSheet format, which is compatible with both Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice. You don’t need a ZohoSheet account, and you can export the sheet to whatever format you want. It just so happens that January 1st of 2006 started on a Sunday, and I tend to think of Sunday as the start of a new week. Hence why my spreadsheet’s “week 1″ starts from Sun Jan 1st. Change it if you disagree. You can also add more weeks. Just don’t forget to change the chart’s source information.

I’ve used completely random expense data. Replace the values in column $Expense with your own expense values. I suggest you use one copy of the worksheet for each type of expense. For example, don’t mix up gasoline expenses with grocery expenses. The point of the MMA (Multiple Moving Average) charts is to be able see trends for each type of expense. But if you feel differently, don’t hesitate to tweak the spreadsheet.

By the way, you can actually use the sheet for tracking other patterns. For example, instead of entering weekly expenses, you could enter new weekly savings. (Not cumulative, but how much you saved each week.)

Hope it helps you. If you have any questions, please drop a comment and I’ll do my best to answer.