What is Kakeibo?
The Kakeibo Journal is a Japanese method of budgeting to help you keep track of your spending and savings.
It was first popularised by Motoko Hani, Japan’s first female journalist, back in 1904.
How does Kakeibo work?
It’s simple really, if you take 10 minutes every day to concentrate and make notes of how you have spent, you are likely to pay more attention to what you spend. It is a mindfulness exercise.
The Steps involved are:
1. List what comes in per month in income
2. List your fixed costs eg. Rent/electricity/child maintenance
3. List your flexible (Changing) costs
4. Decide what amount you want to save each month
5. Go back to your flexible costs and shave off to make sure you can balance
6.Once you have the flexible cost that balances – you divide this into weekly expenditure
7.Keep track of the weekly expenditure every day.
8. See if you can get ahead of your savings target
Additional Recommendations
1. We recommend that you use a totally separate low cost bank account for savings
2. If you are in debt and not managing to get to savings – make the “Savings” amount and extra debt repayment as quickly as possible to save on interest.
And the GREAT News?
We have a totally free xls template for you to download that takes all the hard work out of this wonderful exercise for you! Good luck and let us know if it works!
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