How do I do a 30-day spending audit to find where my money is going?

A spending audit is a one-month diagnostic that reveals the gap between where you think money goes and where it actually goes. Pull the last 30 days of transactions from every account and card, then sort each into categories, housing, food, transportation, subscriptions, dining, shopping, and so on. Add up the totals and rank categories from largest to smallest. Almost everyone finds surprises: forgotten recurring charges, a dining total double what they guessed, or fees they never noticed. Circle the three categories with the biggest gap between expectation and reality, since that is where changes yield the most. Use the findings to build or fix your budget rather than guessing. Doing this once or twice a year keeps subscription creep and lifestyle inflation from quietly expanding your baseline.