Housekeeping book: How to organize your finances

Whether it's rising living costs, unexpected expenses, or the desire for more financial freedom, a housekeeping book helps you understand and manage your finances. It is the foundation for smart decisions, targeted savings and long-term planning. The BBVA app makes it easier to manage your housekeeping budget through digital tools such as expense analysis and account overview.

A housekeeping book is a structured overview of your monthly income and expenses. It shows you how much money you earn, what you spend it on, and where you can save. It's not a book in the traditional sense, but can also be an Excel spreadsheet, an app, or a digital tool. The goal: Full transparency for your finances You will recognize patterns, discover unnecessary expenses, and be able to build up reserves – for example, vacations, emergencies, or larger purchases.

1. Record income: Enter all regular income, such as Wages, unemployment benefits or pension.

2. Note fixed expenses: These occur regularly and are usually unavoidable, such as Rent, electricity or insurances.

3. Document variable expenses: These fluctuate monthly and offer savings potential, such as Costs for food, clothing, leisure activities or restaurant visits.

Groceries:

4. Taking balance: At the end of the month you take balance: How much is left? Where can you optimize?

The BBVA app offers a automatic spending analysisthat intelligently categorizes your transactions – e.g. into “Shopping”, “Leisure” or “Household”. This will help you better understand where your money is going.

Benefits of spend analysis:

• Automatic categorization
• Monthly overview
• Graphical representation of your expenses
• This allows you to import the data directly and enter it into your housekeeping book – saving time and increasing accuracy.

If you use multiple bank accounts, keeping a housekeeping book quickly becomes confusing. This will help you BBVA Multibanking: You can integrate accounts from other banks into the BBVA app and thus manage all income and expenses centrally.

Advantages of multibanking:

• View account balances from all banks centrally
• Quickly check credit card transactions
• Simply add more banks
• This turns your BBVA app into a true financial hub – independent of the bank.
  

The BBVA savings box is a digital tool that allows you to five savings goals you can define. To achieve this, you can set automatic rules such as:

• Round up purchases and save the difference
• A fixed percentage of your salary set aside monthly

The savings box is interest-bearing, and you can keep track of your progress at any time. Ideal for:

• Vacation
• Emergency fund
• Larger purchases
• Gifts or hobbies
  

1. Maintain regularly – preferably daily.
2. Stay realistic – it’s better to enter too much than too little.
3. Set goals – e.g. Save 100€ per month.
4. Question expenses – do you really need the subscription?
5. Use tools – BBVA app, Excel or housekeeping calculator.
   

A housekeeping book is not a control instrument, but a tool for self-determination and financial freedom. With the digital features of the BBVA app – from spending analysis to multi-banking to the savings box – the housekeeping book becomes a smart companion.