Plain Lab · journal
Money Diary
Four fixed columns for what you bought, how you paid, and how much it cost, with room afterward to see where it actually went.
Specification
- Trim
- 148 × 210 mm · 5.827 × 8.268 in
- Pages
- 100
- Leaves
- 50
- Sheets
- 25
- Signatures
- 5 × 20pp
- Spine
- 5.72 mm
- Paper
- white
- Ruling
- lined
- Ruling pitch
- 7.14 mm · 20.25 pt · 9/32 in
- Rows per page
- 24
A receipt folded into a pocket gets read once, at the till, and never again. By the time the statement arrives a fortnight later, the amount is right but the reason for it is gone, and every entry starts to look like every other entry.
The day book fixes four columns: the date, what was bought, whether it went on cash or card, and the amount. Nothing else is asked of the line, so filling it in takes about as long as reading the receipt did. Finance pages further back give the totals somewhere to sit once a week or a month is done, apart from the daily record.
It does not categorise a purchase as necessary or wasteful, and it carries no column for that judgement. What it keeps is the plain fact of what left your hand and when, which is the part memory drops first.
What is inside
- Day book
- 60pp
- Four columns fixed, so a purchase is written down the same way whether it was cash or card.
- Finance
- 6pp
- Short pages for totals worth adding up on their own, apart from the daily line.
- Notes
- 16pp
- Plain lined pages for the spending a column can't explain.
- Reflection
- 6pp
- A shorter page for looking back at where the money actually went.
- Reference
- 12pp
- Weight and length tables worked from definitions, with emergency numbers checked against two sources.
The film
Page by page
A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.
Real pages
Made at the Hibrkraft bindery, Bogor · about the maker
Books that sit alongside it
- Decision InsertWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
- Decision LogWorks alongsideshares record-keeping
Questions
What are the day book columns?
Date, what I bought, cash or card, amount.
How big is it?
A5, 148 x 210 mm, 100 pages, 5.72 mm across the spine.
Is it dated?
No. Start it on whichever day you open it.
What are the finance pages for?
A short page to total the week or the month, kept apart from the daily line so a running total never crowds a single entry.
Does it balance my accounts for me?
No. It has no formula and checks no arithmetic. It gives every purchase one place to be written down in the order it happened.
Accurate accounts should be kept of every expense and of all the sales; and at the end of each week the profit should be divided.
