ArthPulse › Where does my money go?

Where does my money go? How to find your spending leaks

To find out where your money goes, put a full month of transactions from every account in one place, remove the transfers, sort what is left by category and merchant, and add up the small payments. The answer is rarely one big expense. It is usually dozens of small ones nobody was counting.

Why the money seems to vanish

A salary arrives in one go, but it leaves in a hundred pieces: rent and EMIs on fixed dates, then a steady trickle of UPI payments, card swipes and auto-debits across several accounts. No single bank app sees all of it, and small payments do not feel like spending at all. By the 25th, the balance simply looks lower than it should.

Five steps to the real answer

1. Get every transaction in one place. A whole month, from every bank account, every card and every UPI app. Missing one account hides part of the picture.
2. Separate spending from transfers. A credit card bill payment, money moved to your own savings account, or a refund is not spending. Counting them inflates the total and hides the real pattern.
3. Sort by category and merchant. Food delivery, groceries, transport, shopping, bills. Then list your top ten merchants: the same few names usually account for a surprising share.
4. Count the small payments. Add up everything under a few hundred rupees. Twenty payments of ₹150 add up to ₹3,000 over a month, and most people make far more than twenty.
5. Compare months. One month tells you where the money went. Two months tell you whether anything you changed is working.

The usual leaks

• Food delivery and quick commerce: small, frequent, and easy to underestimate
• Daily commute: autos and cabs added up over a month
• Auto-debits you set up once and stopped noticing
• Card spending that feels free until the statement arrives
• "Just this once" shopping that happens every week

Doing it by hand, and why it rarely lasts

You can do all five steps with bank statements and a spreadsheet. It works, for a month or two. Then a busy week happens, twenty transactions go unlogged, and the picture is gone. The method is simple; keeping it up is the hard part.

Doing it automatically

ArthPulse does the heavy lifting automatically, from the SMS alerts your banks, cards and UPI apps already send:

• every account and card in one place, with no bank logins (how multiple accounts work);
• card bill payments and transfers between accounts kept out of your spending;
• every transaction sorted by category, with your top merchants;
• this month compared with last, and money in alongside money out (salary and income tracking).

Related: UPI expense tracker · Credit card billing cycles explained · Choosing a private expense tracker