There's a persistent myth that before you can do anything, you need to go line-by-line through every transaction from the last two years, categorise it down to the cent, and arrive at a perfectly precise monthly budget. That's not true.
Cameron Drury · Co-Founder, Canwi
If you're waiting until you feel ready to do a forensic audit of the past before starting your financial plan, you'll be waiting a while. What you actually need is a realistic picture of what you'll spend going forward. Not a forensic audit of the past - just an honest sense of what your life costs.
Most people have a rough idea. You don't need a PhD in your own bank statement to get started.
That said...
Eating your broccoli
There's a reason financial advisers always ask you to review your expenses. It's not to punish you. It's because looking back at what you've actually spent - not what you think you spend - is genuinely one of the most eye-opening things you can do.
Think of it like broccoli. You know it's good for you. You probably don't rush to do it. But when you do, you feel better for it.
Most people significantly underestimate what they spend. Not because they're reckless - because humans are wired to remember the big purchases and forget the small, recurring ones.
Your brain doesn't naturally track the $14.99 that quietly disappears each month for a streaming service you forgot you signed up for. Or the three "quick" UberEats orders a week that somehow total $400 a month.
A quick look backwards helps you catch those patterns - and plan forward with much more confidence.
Two ways to do it - one easy, one worth it
Option 1 - Fast, good starting point
Use an app
Apps like Frollo connect to your bank accounts and automatically categorise your transactions. You can get a decent picture of your spending in minutes, not hours.
The catch: automatic categorisation isn't perfect. A charge from "Uber" could be an Uber ride, UberEats, or an airport trip at 5am - and those mean very different things when you're thinking about what you actually spend money on. You'll likely need to do a bit of cleanup. But for a quick, directional view of where your money goes? Genuinely useful.
Option 2 - Slow... but eye openning
Download your CSV and do it yourself
This is the broccoli option. It takes a few hours. But almost everyone who does it finds something they didn't expect.
How it works
Log into your bank and download a CSV export of your transactions - ideally for the last 3-6 months. 12 months if you want the full picture, including annual expenses that only hit once a year like insurance renewals or rego.
Open it in a spreadsheet - Excel, Google Sheets, whatever you prefer.
Go through each transaction and assign it a category.
Total up each category and annualise the result - multiply your monthly average by 12.
It sounds tedious. Sorry - but it just is.
Pictured: my face after categorising a year's worth of transactions.
But here's what also happens: you start scrolling through transactions and you see three $4.50 charges in one week from a café and think that's nothing. Then you see it's every week. Then you do the maths. That's $700 a year on one café. Not bad or good - but real... And real is what you need. When you're looking at your plan and wondering how to achieve your goals and where you can start to adjust your expenses groups of transactions like that immediately come to mind for where you can trim.
You also tend to find things you'd completely forgotten about. Subscriptions from a free trial you never cancelled. A gym membership from 2022. An annual software charge you thought you'd cancelled. These aren't life-changing amounts individually - but they add up, and more importantly, they mean your mental model of what you spend is wrong.
We've built a template to make this easier
Our expense categorisation spreadsheet has pre-set categories that map to how Canwi's default buckets look at your expenses. Once you've done the categorisation, you can plug those numbers straight into your financial plan.
Download the Expense Categorisation Template →
What to do with the numbers
Once you've got a realistic monthly picture of your expenses, you're ready to build a financial plan that actually holds up - because it's grounded in how you actually live, not how you vaguely imagine you live.
In Canwi, you enter your expenses as part of setting up your current financial position. From there, you can start simulating life events - buying a home, having kids, changing jobs, planning for retirement - and see how each decision affects your cashflow and net worth over time.
The point isn't perfection. The point is having a starting point that's honest - so when you look at your plan and it says "you'll have $X in 10 years", you can actually believe it.
Ready to put your numbers to work?
Start your free Canwi plan →
General information only. This article is intended for general educational purposes and does not constitute financial product advice.
