In other words, it feels restrictive, and like a chore.

But tracking your spending can change your life. That’s because the real purpose of tracking your spending is to give you insight into what you’re actually doing (instead of what you think you’re doing.)

That can shock you into action.

An example

Let me give you an example of what I mean. A few weeks ago, I started using a pedometer. For the first week, I just went about my days like normal, and made a note of the number of steps at the end of each day. My goal was to see what was a typical number of steps for me.

It turned out that I was walking anywhere from 2000-2500 steps a day. Which puts me in the sedentary range. (Ouch.) But what really got me was the weekend. I had no idea I was such a slug! I didn’t even hit 1,000 steps on that first Saturday.

Sunday, I got up and walked a mile. That’s being shocked into action. (I’m now walking at least 2 miles a day, which is about 4600 steps for me.)

And all it took for me to change was a little bit of tracking.

Tracking your spending is a tool

Like that pedometer, tracking your spending is a tool that can allow you to see what’s going on in your life. You may think that you’re using your money the way you’d planned, but you will only know for sure if you actually check.

And if you find out that you aren’t doing quite what you’d intended with your money, you can use that tool to verify that you’re making the changes you want to make.

Tracking your spending isn’t about being restrictive, or about getting a money-related chore done. Instead, it’s about getting information — and then using that information to help you become successful.

You don’t have to do it forever either, although you might want to because it can actually become fun. At a minimum, I’d suggest doing a little spending checkup once or twice a year.

Have you ever made a financial mistake? I guess a more appropriate question would be, when was the last time you made a mistake with your finances? Or maybe, What did you learn from your last mistake?

Whether you would like to admit it or not, everyone makes mistakes when it comes to managing their finances. Even those without debt or responsibly investing for their finances – everyone! The important thing, when it comes to finances, is not to avoid making mistakes, but learning from them.

What financial mistakes have you made?

When I bring up the topic of mistakes with your finances, does something immediately come to mind? Or are you struggling to think of something? Tradition would tell us that the person who is in the latter position would be better off with their finances, right? Less mistakes = better financial management, right? Not necessarily!

I am sure many of you have heard the, “I got out of this much debt in this number of months,” story a million times. I know that I have. When I hear these stories, I immediately wonder what poor financial choices people made that led them to this position. I often put myself above them because I don’t have any debt. Yet, in reality, I was lucky to graduate school without any debt while also marrying someone who did the same. When you really think of it, the other person who had to dig themselves out of a hole is probably more responsible with their finances.

Why financial mistakes can be a good thing

If you are wondering why having financial skeletons in your closet could be a good thing, let me explain. If another person has $20,000 of debt and finally comes to their senses, what do they do? Well, if they are serious about getting out of debt, they lower their expenses and try to increase their income – the basics of Finances 101. What can happen (although not always) is that this person has a new appreciation for being responsible with their money. They understand the value of each and every penny and will probably continue this lifestyle moving forward.

Now, if you compare this to someone like me that has never been in debt, at first glance I am sure you would take my position over the first. Yet, when it comes to people who lack the extreme challenges and stories, they often don’t manage their money all that well.

Appreciating what you have

While I can’t say that most people who stay out of debt are in that position because of pure luck or family wealth, I can say that most people who haven’t had a significant financial challenge don’t appreciate what they have. Yes, that old saying, “You can’t appreciate what you have until you lose it,” applies to finances as well in my opinion.

The simple fact is that if I have extra money each month, there’s good chance that I am going to blow it away on something worthless. The person who has radically turned their finances around in life will probably look at that extra income differently.

Regardless of how many mistakes you have made with your finances, try to make the most of it. Learning from your mistakes is something that can change your life around for the better.

I hope you don’t misunderstand what I am saying here: I am not saying that you should try to create financial mistakes for yourself so that you can appreciate your money better. Instead, take your current situation and use it as motivation for better. If you haven’t had to overcome any major financial challenges, keep that in mind as you are managing your finances.

From an actionable perspective, accountability means being doing the things you say you will do — even if no one else would ever know if you didn’t. In other words, holding yourself accountable means recognizing that you are responsible for your own actions and inactions — and then doing something about it.

Paying attention

When you start to hold yourself accountable, it may feel a little painful at first. You may not like some of the things you see, especially if you tend to view yourself as having done things wrong or having made bad decisions in the past.

But try not to let those things get you down, because while we all mess up, not everyone takes responsibility for having done so.

Taking responsibility is a huge step, because it means you can move on to working at making the appropriate changes. As you start to do that, you’ll feel good about yourself, because holding yourself accountable is also a sign of having integrity and respecting yourself.

Making progress

Almost as a side effect, you’ll then begin to move toward where you want to be. This is because when you have goals and take responsibility for doing what it takes to make them happen, you make progress.

In fact, accountability is an important part of the steps needed to successfully reach a goal. Stepping back regularly and frequently to verify that you’re on track with your statements and goals (and then doing something about it if you aren’t) is a part of the process.

What could you do to hold yourself more accountable? Or do you already have a good system in place?

Well, one of those projects is something new that I’m super excited about: the first annual Women’s Money Week. I’ve been working on the project with Elizabeth Sanberg, who is the co-founder of GoGreenTravelGreen.com and one of the Wise Bread staff writers.

Women’s Money Week will be held March 5th-11th. It’ll be similar to a week long blog carnival, but with prizes, tools & content created especially for that week. Content will be posted both on womensmoneyweek.com itself and on participants’ blogs throughout the week.

The topics

The idea is to encourage women to speak up about money, take control of our finances, and reshape our financial future.

This year’s topics will be:

• Entrepreneurship / Making Money
• Relationships & Money
• Saving & Investing
• Budgeting
• Money in Your 20s/30s/40s/50s/Retirement
• Debt
• and Goals / Taking Action

How you can be involved

There are two ways you can participate, and we’d love to have you do one or both!

First, of course, everyone who is interested is welcome to read and comment on the articles and site during that week. We want to get some good discussions going.

(We’ve got some other ideas up our sleeves too, so if you’d like to be the first to hear about those, sign up for our general email list using the “Stay Updated” form on Women’s Money Week.)

If you’re a blogger, you can also participate by blogging about one or more of the topics on their designated days. If you’re interested in doing that, sign up on the How to Participate page and we’ll get you added to the list.

I hope you’ll join in!

With the arrival of our third son, my wife has made the decision to leave the workforce. I give her props because I know, as every other parent knows, it’s much harder raising three young kids that working.

Don’t believe me? I invite you over to our house for a weekend.

When she leaves her job, we’ll be missing out on some of the wonderful benefits that come with a corporate job including her life insurance policy.

For working parents deciding how much coverage is needed can be pretty cut and dry. They know the salary their family would lose if they should pass, and that’s usually a great starting point for determining life insurance coverage.

But what about the parent who stays at home? If you are a stay at home mom or dad, deciding how big of a policy to take out can be a challenge. Deciding why one might need coverage, how much the at home parent is worth monetarily, and how much insurance coverage that translates to is a little more difficult to figure out.

Why Do Stay At Home Parents Need Life Insurance Coverage?

If you or your spouse is a stay at home parent, you may think that a life insurance policy on the stay at home parent is not a necessity. If one parent is not contributing to the family finances, having insurance coverage on that person might seem like a waste of money. Financial advisors would tell you this is simply not true.

If you have ever lost a loved one, you know how difficult the process can be. When your children lose a parent it can be downright devastating and heartbreaking, and emotionally tolling to deal with for everyone involved. On top of the emotional upheaval comes a unique set of financial challenges. Unexpected illness or tragedy may come at a surprising cost, not to mention the funeral and burial fees.

If there is no life insurance policy to help meet the financial expenses related to the death of the parent, the family could be faced with financial hardship. This could potentially mean the surviving spouse may struggle to make the mortgage payment, feed the family, and take care of other financial responsibilities. They may be forced to find additional employment, having to leave the children for extended periods in child care.

Having a life insurance policy in place will help to ease financial constraints and allow your family to begin the healing process, without having to worry about whether or not the bank will reposes the family home or where money is going to come from to pay for groceries.

How Much Is A Stay At Home Parent Worth?

If stay at home parents were paid what they were worth, they would in many cases make more than their partners. When you think about it, stay at home parents are usually the ones providing care to the kids, doing all the shopping for the household, as well as the cooking and cleaning. They are often the ones chauffeuring the kids to activities, doing the household book keeping, and so much more. Many would argue that parents who stay home and do not work out of the home are undervalued.

A study conducted by Salary.com in 2009 looked at stay at home parents and determined that their average hours per week came to 96, over double that of a typical American 40 hour work week. The study concluded that if stay at home parents were compensated for their time, their average yearly salary would be $122,732.00.

To put that into perspective, Insure.com did a similar study referred to as the “The Mother’s Day Index”, that estimated that a mom’s annual salary would be around $61,436

How to Determine How Much Coverage You Need

When you look at what a stay at home parent’s salary should be, the life insurance coverage you need is probably a lot higher than what you might have thought is should be and not getting coverage is not really an option. As already stated, if something should happen to you, your spouse would most likely struggle financially to fill your shoes.

When you look at the amount needed to cover a parent who stays home for ten years you are looking at a total of $1.2 million and for a period of 20 years $2.4 million and those figures do not take inflation into account. If you are a stay at home parent and something should happen to you, having a term life insurance policy in place to cover what you are worth can greatly help to reduce the financial burden on your spouse.

When deciding on how much life insurance coverage you should get, you should look at what tasks the stay at home parent actually performs and determine how much it would cost to hire someone to perform such tasks. Having money to cover these expenses can help your entire family adjust if you were gone. Of course there are other factors to consider when taking out a policy.

Depending on the cost of living where you currently live can make a difference in how large a policy you will need. How many children you have should also be considered. Does one of your children have special needs that would require a higher cost in care? Does your spouse or any of your children have health issues that would also require money for extra care? Taking all of your individual circumstances into consideration will help narrow down how much coverage is needed.

Deciding On a Policy

Now that you can see how important it is for parents who do not work out of the house to have a life insurance policy, you should take the steps needed to get coverage. When deciding on an insurance policy it will be critical for you to make sure you take the time to look at several companies and carefully compare them looking at the difference in coverage from one company to the next.

Cost will, of course, also be a factor. You will want to make sure you also compare price quotes and choose one that offers a reasonable rate that fits your family’s current and predicted future budget.

Finally, you will need to look at the differences between term and life policies to decide which one will best fit your lifestyle needs. Both offer their advantages and disadvantages, and depending on your unique financial and family situation one might fit your needs better than the other.

Jeff Rose is an Illinois Certified Financial Planner and also offers term life insurance in Illinois. Jeff authors the blogs Good Financial Cents and Soldier of Finance. He is a father of 3 awesome boys, husband to the coolest chick on the planet, In-N-Out Burger junkie and Crossfit addict.

According to David Bach’s web site, the latte factor is based on the idea that “putting aside as little as a few dollars a day for your future rather than spending it on little purchases such as lattes, bottled water, fast food, cigarettes, magazines and so on, can really make a difference between accumulating wealth and living paycheck to paycheck”.

He’s completely right, but like Aloysa, I think that you should spend money on the things that you enjoy.

Mindless spending vs. purposeful spending

Mindless spending on things is different from purposeful spending in a couple of ways. The typical little things listed by David Bach all have a couple of things in common: they’re not super-expensive in one shot, and they’re easy to make a habit — which of course means they add up. Habits are things that you do without really thinking about. You just do them because you’re used to doing them. (Or in some cases, because you’re addicted to them.)

Where’s the joy in that?

I think spending should be about getting what you really want — whether that’s travel, an expensive handbag, or a Lotus Elise — while making sure your financial needs are met. In my book, making sure your financial needs are met includes being out of debt, having a fully-funded emergency fund and setting aside money each month for retirement.

Get what you really want

So I think my husband should go right ahead and get the Lotus Elise that he wants. (Plus, it’s a very cool car. My car might even get jealous.)

He was obsessing over the Elise awhile back, and then started talking to me about how maybe he shouldn’t get it because it’s a lot of money to spend on a car. (Probably $28,000 for a used one, which is what he would get.) I immediately said, “Hey, I fully intend to go to Antarctica at $10,000 a person, at least you’ll have a car when you get done spending the money. Get what you want.”

Spend joyfully and responsibly

If he’d told me he wanted to go out and buy the Elise today, before we’d finished paying off our house and before he’d saved up the money, I’d be singing a different tune. But I firmly believe that a big bonus to getting your financial house in order is the ability to spend without guilt. (Along with the ability to do good and help others, and the huge reduction in stress.)

So that’s why I think my husband should go ahead and get that Lotus if he really wants it, and why you should enjoy your latte if you’re not just drinking it down out of habit.

But if you’re not enjoying the things you’re buying (or can’t afford them, even if they’re “only” a little bit) put that money to better use elsewhere.

P.S. MoneyCrush was in two carnivals recently: the Carnival of Personal Finance and the very first Carnival of Retirement. Check out the many great articles in each of those if you have the chance.