How do I know where my money goes each month?

Money usually goes where habits live. The cleanest way to find it is to sort the last 30 to 60 days of transactions into categories and look for the repeat charges, the weekend splurges, and the subscriptions you forgot about.

That gives you the pattern instead of a vague feeling. A few large items and a lot of small ones often explain most of the drift, which is why a monthly review usually reveals more than a random glance at the checking balance.

If you want the answer to stick, do the same review once a month. The goal is not perfect tracking; the goal is seeing the same money leak before it becomes a surprise.

A simple budget planner can help make the categories visible: budget planner notebook.

So the short answer is to look at the transactions, sort them by type, and keep the review on a schedule so the spending pattern becomes obvious.

If you want the review to be useful, split the spending into fixed costs, variable costs, and irregular costs. Fixed costs are the same every month, variable costs move around, and irregular costs are the ones that feel like surprises but are actually predictable if you look at the year instead of the week. That simple breakdown usually shows where the money was hiding.

Once you can see those buckets, you can decide which one deserves the next adjustment. Sometimes the leak is subscriptions. Sometimes it is food delivery. Sometimes it is a bill you forgot to plan for because it only shows up every few months. The categories do more than explain the spending; they point to the fix.