FinTech & Ethical Economy · Project 6 of 12

Where The Money Actually Went

Where the household money actually goes

Write down what you think you spend, seal it, log every rupee for fourteen days, then compare.

Six weeksNo equipment on the paper route 20 written stepsMarked out of 20Free forever
The question

How many rupees a week actually leave one small purse, and in which category is the gap between what somebody believed and what really happened the largest?

A shop that cannot say where its cash went is one bad month from closing, and a household that cannot say it argues about the wrong thing. Bookkeepers, accountants, bank staff, microfinance officers and fintech product teams all earn their living from the same two moves you make here: capture an outflow at the moment it happens, then sort it into a category somebody else can audit. The gap between what people believe they spend and what they actually spend is the entire reason budgeting products exist, and you get to measure that gap on a real purse before anyone tries to sell you one.

Two acts. Find, then fix.

Every EAD project runs the same shape. The first act produces a number nobody in the room could previously state. The second act changes exactly one thing and proves whether that number moved.

Act 1 · Find
You track every rupee leaving one small purse for fourteen days — your own pocket money, a household grocery float, or a small shop's daily till logged with the owner's written permission — recording the amount, the category and who decided it, at the moment the money goes. On day one, before a single row exists, the person who holds that purse writes down what they believe leaves it in a normal week, and that page is sealed and not looked at again until day fourteen.

A one-page costed problem statement carrying four lines: whose purse this is, total rupees out per week, the category where the believed figure and the actual figure differ most, and what that gap comes to per year at this rate. Beside it sits a bar chart of rupees per week by category, guessed bar against actual bar, largest gap first.

Act 2 · Fix
You change exactly one thing — a written limit on one category, a separate envelope for one category, one category logged where everybody can see it, or one habit dropped — and you leave the categories and the logging method untouched. You then log fourteen more consecutive days under the identical rule, so the only moving part is the change you named.

Two fortnights set side by side per category in rupees per week, a paired bar chart of before against after, the difference in rupees per week and per year, a named list of confounders, and the purse holder's recorded answer on whether the change stays.

What actually gets measured

The numberrupees leaving one purse per week, split by category, in rupees per week
BeforeFourteen consecutive days of logging every outflow from one purse at the moment it happens, each row carrying the amount, the category, the decider written as a role rather than a name, and what it was for. Totalled by category and divided by two for rupees per week, then set against the weekly figure the purse holder wrote down and sealed on day one, unopened until day fourteen.
AfterFourteen more consecutive days logged from the same purse with the same categories, the same log, the same at-the-moment rule and the same fourteen-day length, beginning the day after the change starts, reported in rupees per week per category beside the first fortnight.
The honest partA well-measured failure scores higher than an unmeasured success. If the number did not move, say so and explain why.

Every step, written out

Twenty steps in total — ten to find the number, ten to fix it. Pick the route that matches what your school actually has.

A folded card kept with the purse and a pen catch every outflow; the totals, the gap and the bars are worked out by hand at the end of each fortnight, and the day-one guess goes into an envelope sealed and signed across the flap.
You need: A folded index card or small notebook kept with the purse, ruled into five columns: date and time, amount, category, who decided as a role, what it was for · A pen kept with the card, and a spare, because a log that depends on finding a pen fails on day three · An envelope for the day-one guess, sealed and signed across the flap by both people so the date cannot be argued with later · A second envelope, dated, holding the used daily cards so anybody can recount your totals · Squared paper and a ruler for the rupees-per-week bars and the paired before-and-after bars, drawn to a stated scale · A wall calendar or a ruled sheet with one box per day for twenty-eight days, for the daily totals

  1. Choose the purse

    40 minutes
    Pick the one purse you will track for twenty-eight days and get written permission if it is not your own.
    • Choose one of three: your own pocket money, a household grocery float, or a small shop's daily till.
    • Write at the top of a fresh page the one sentence that defines an outflow: any money leaving that purse, of any amount, including coins and including money spent for somebody else.
    • Where the purse is not yours, ask the holder face to face and have them sign and date a page saying they agree and may stop the log on any day without giving a reason.
    • Where it is a shop till, get the owner's permission in writing on that same page, and write on it that the shop will never be named in anything you publish.
    • Fold the signed page into the evidence envelope and write the date on the outside.
    Write down: The purse chosen, the one-sentence definition of an outflow, and the signed, dated permission page.
    Finished when: You can state in one sentence which purse you are logging, and where it is not yours a signed page carrying today's date sits in the envelope.
    Commonest mistake: Choosing a purse you only see once a week. Every outflow has to be caught at the moment it happens, so pick the purse that is in the room with you.

  2. Seal the guess

    30 minutes
    Get the guess written down before a single rupee is logged.
    • Ask the person who holds the purse to write, in their own hand, what they think leaves it in a normal week: one total and a figure against each category.
    • Write your own guess on a separate slip in the same shape, even where it is your own purse and your own money.
    • Put both slips in an envelope, seal it, and have both of you sign across the flap so it cannot be opened and rewritten.
    • Write on the front: today's date, and 'not to be opened until' with the day-fourteen date beside it.
    • Hand the envelope to a third person to hold for the fortnight where you think you will be tempted to look.
    Write down: Two guesses — the purse holder's and your own — each with a weekly total and a figure per category, both dated.
    Finished when: A sealed envelope exists, signed across the flap, with two dates written on the front.
    Commonest mistake: Guessing after you have started logging. A guess written on day three is not a guess, and the whole finding rests on this envelope predating the data.

  3. Build the log

    40 minutes
    Build a card system that records one outflow in under fifteen seconds.
    • Write your category list on one page, between six and ten categories, each one a thing a stranger could sort a purchase into without asking you.
    • Rule a pocket card into five columns: date and time, amount, category, who decided as a role, what it was for.
    • Make fourteen cards at once, one per day, each headed with its date, and keep them with a pen where the purse lives.
    • Write three invented rows on a spare card to check the columns work in your hand, then tear that card up.
    • Add a small box headed 'estimated' on every card, to tick against any amount you reconstructed rather than saw.
    Write down: The category list, the five column headings, and fourteen dated blank cards.
    Finished when: You write a test row on the spare card in under fifteen seconds and every column has something in it.
    Commonest mistake: Building fifteen categories because every purchase feels different. Above ten you start guessing which one a row belongs in, which puts your own noise inside the finding.

  4. Log fourteen days

    10 minutes a day for fourteen days
    Record every outflow from that purse at the moment it happens, for fourteen consecutive days.
    • Write the row before the money is out of your hand, not later that evening.
    • Where you genuinely could not write it at the moment, write it the same day and tick the estimated box.
    • Write the decider as a role — me, the purse holder, another member of the household, the shop owner — and never as a name.
    • Write a zero on a day nothing left the purse, so that day exists in the count.
    • Each night put the day's card in the dated envelope and write one line on anything missed or reconstructed.
    Write down: One row per outflow with amount, category, decider role, purpose and time, plus fourteen nightly failure-log lines.
    Finished when: Fourteen dated cards sit in the envelope, including the days with nothing on them, and no row has a blank amount.
    Commonest mistake: Leaving the small ones out. Tea, a bus fare, a top-up and a packet of biscuits are exactly where the invisible weekly total hides, so log every amount, down to single rupees.

  5. Total by category

    60 minutes
    Total the fortnight by category, then open the sealed envelope and measure the gap.
    • Add each category across the fourteen cards longhand, twice, and accept a total only when the two runs agree.
    • Divide every category total by two for rupees per week, leaving the working visible on the page.
    • Only now cut open the sealed envelope, in front of the purse holder, and write the guessed figure beside the actual figure for every category.
    • Draw the bars on squared paper to a stated scale: guessed bar and actual bar side by side for each category, largest gap first.
    • Optional, and only if you want it: mark each of your own outflows N for needed, C for chosen or X for neither, and write one line on whether anything carried interest or a late fee. This is your own reflection on your own spending, never a verdict on anybody else's.
    Write down: Rupees per week per category, the guess beside it, the gap per category, and the name of the category carrying the largest gap.
    Finished when: You can say one sentence aloud: we thought X rupees a week went on this category and it was actually Y.
    Commonest mistake: Reporting only the biggest category. The finding is the biggest gap, not the biggest total — the category everybody already knew about is not news.

  6. Name the cost

    50 minutes
    Finish the costed problem statement on one page and choose the single change you will make.
    • Write four lines: whose purse this is, total rupees out per week, the category with the largest gap between believed and actual, and what that gap comes to per year at this rate.
    • Draw the paired guessed-against-actual bars on squared paper with the scale stated and the finding as the title.
    • List three candidate changes — a written limit on one category, a separate envelope for one category, one category written up where everybody can see it daily, or one habit dropped — with the rupees each might save.
    • Choose one and write: for fourteen days I will change X and expect this category to fall from A to B rupees per week.
    • Read the page aloud to the purse holder and have them sign and date it where they agree to the change.
    Write down: The one-page costed problem statement, the three candidate changes with predicted savings, and the chosen change as one testable sentence.
    Finished when: Somebody who was not there reads the page once and repeats your gap figure back correctly.
    Commonest mistake: Choosing the change that saves most on paper but nobody will keep. A change abandoned on day three measures nothing — choose the one that survives fourteen days.

  7. Write the rules

    40 minutes
    Write the protocol that keeps the second fortnight measurable against the first.
    • Write what stays fixed: the same purse, the same categories, the same card, the same at-the-moment rule, the same fourteen days.
    • Write what is allowed to move: only the one change you named in step six.
    • Write the change on a card as an instruction somebody could follow without you in the room, and pin it where the purse lives.
    • Rule and date fourteen fresh blank cards before any data exists, and put them with the pen.
    • Write your prediction on the page, date it, and have one person witness it with a signature.
    Write down: The protocol as a numbered list, the change written as an instruction, the fourteen dated cards, and the witnessed prediction.
    Finished when: Fourteen empty dated cards are ready and a signed prediction exists that predates the data.
    Commonest mistake: Renaming the categories between fortnights because the first set annoyed you. Fix them now; one category renamed halfway makes the two fortnights uncomparable.

  8. Log week one

    10 minutes a day for seven days
    Run the change and log the first seven days exactly as you logged the baseline.
    • Write every outflow on the day's card, at the moment it happens, using the same five columns.
    • Total these seven days by category and compare them against the matching seven days of the baseline rather than against the whole fortnight.
    • Write down every occasion the change was not kept, and why, without softening it.
    • Ask the purse holder once, on day seven, whether the change is annoying, and write the answer word for word.
    • Do not alter the change mid-week; where it turns out to be unworkable, write that down and keep logging.
    Write down: Seven dated cards, the seven-day category totals, and a dated failure entry for every day the change slipped.
    Finished when: Seven consecutive dated cards sit in the second envelope and the failure log holds at least one honest entry.
    Commonest mistake: Quietly loosening the change when it starts to pinch. Log the slip — a change kept nine days out of fourteen is a real result, and a change you pretend was kept is not.

  9. Days eight to fourteen

    10 minutes a day for seven days, plus 45 minutes
    Finish the second fortnight and compare the two fortnights honestly.
    • Log the remaining seven days with nothing altered.
    • Total the second fortnight by category longhand, twice, and divide by two for rupees per week.
    • Draw the paired bars on squared paper to the same scale you used before: before and after for each category, largest change first.
    • List every confounder you can name: a wedding, a festival, a price rise, a guest, an illness, a different pay date, and the fact that logging money tends to reduce it on its own.
    • Write the change in rupees per week and as a percentage, and say plainly whether twenty-eight days is enough to be sure.
    Write down: The paired before-and-after bars, the difference in rupees per week and per year, and the named confounder list.
    Finished when: You can state the before figure, the after figure, and at least two reasons the difference might not be your doing.
    Commonest mistake: Reporting the good week and burying the other. Report both weeks, including the one that went backwards — a well-measured failure outscores an unmeasured success.

  10. Share and reflect

    60 minutes
    Publish the finding, defend it to real people, and record what the purse holder will keep.
    • Deliver the defence aloud in under three minutes to three people who sign and date the page, or record it on a borrowed phone.
    • Read every page for card numbers, account numbers, anybody's income, and the shop's name where a shop was involved, and cross all of it out before the pages leave your hand.
    • Read the one-page explainer to three people this purse actually pays for, and write down what each of them said.
    • Hand or post the bar chart to the expert you interviewed with one question: what would you have categorised differently.
    • Complete the relations ledger with ten names, roles, dates and what each person replied.
    Write down: The defence, signed and dated by its witnesses, the one-page explainer, and the relations ledger holding ten relationships.
    Finished when: Ten relationships are logged with dates and replies, nothing identifying survives on the shared pages, and the purse holder has said on record whether the change stays.
    Commonest mistake: Passing round the daily cards. The cards are evidence for the assessor, not for the street — show the category totals and keep the cards in the envelope.

What the student hands in

Nine pieces. Together they are the folder a parent can sit down and read.

1. Question cardOne card naming the purse, the fourteen days and the category list, and the question: how many rupees a week leave this purse, and where is the gap between belief and reality largest.
2. Expert interview packFive written questions for a shopkeeper, accountant, teller or microfinance officer, your category totals attached as one page carrying no names or account numbers, the date of the request, and the reply word for word.
3. Evidence logEvery outflow with its date, time, amount, category and decider role, the sealed day-one guess with its timestamp, and a tick against every reconstructed amount. No card or account numbers, no income figures.
4. Failure logThe outflows you caught late, the days the change was not kept, any category you renamed, the week a festival broke the pattern, and what each did to the comparison, all dated.
5. The buildThe logging system itself: the form and linked sheet, or the daily card and the envelope, with the category list and the paired before-and-after chart of rupees per week per category.
6. One-page explainerOne page read in ninety seconds: the purse, the weekly total, the guessed figure beside the actual one, the single change, the fortnight result, and what twenty-eight days cannot tell anybody.
7. Identity cardA name and a one-line promise for the log, so the household or the shop can refer to it by name, plus the single sentence you want repeated at somebody else's table.
8. Relations ledgerTen names with dates and replies: one shopkeeper, accountant, teller or microfinance officer, three people this purse pays for, three peers who checked your arithmetic, and three people you sent the chart to who answered.
9. Defence videoUnder three minutes on camera: the purse without naming anybody, the weekly total, the largest gap, the single change, the fortnight result, and the limits you accept without argument. No account details on screen.

The expert they have to find

Ten logged relationships are required before this project can be marked. One of them is an expert, and this is who.

A shopkeeper who keeps a daily cash book, an accountant or bookkeeper, a bank teller, or a microfinance loan officer — anybody who sees where other people's money actually goes and has to sort it into categories for a living.

How to find one

Go to a shop that has been on the same street for years and ask in the quiet hour after opening. Microfinance branch offices sit in most towns and a loan officer will usually answer two questions at the counter. Search LinkedIn for 'accountant' or 'bookkeeper' plus your city. A college commerce department will name a lecturer who has done real books, and any bank branch has a teller between customers mid-morning.

What to say

Hello, my name is [name]. I logged every rupee leaving one purse for fourteen days, and the total came out very different from what we thought we spent. I would like to know whether my categories are the ones you would use. Could you spare fifteen minutes this week? I will send five questions first.

What to ask

  • When you write down a day's spending, which categories do you actually use, and why those ones?
  • How far out are people usually when they guess their own weekly spending, and in which direction?
  • Which kind of spending do people forget to record most often, in your experience?
  • What is the simplest record-keeping change you have seen actually stick for more than a month?
  • If you had my fourteen days of rows, what one column would you have asked me to record that I did not?

The defence

Eight of the twenty marks. A student who cannot answer these has not finished, however good the artefact is.

  • Would that fall in weekly spending have happened anyway without your change, and how do you know?
  • Logging money tends to reduce it on its own. How much of your Act 2 result is the change and how much is simply being watched?
  • You logged twenty-eight days. Which weeks of the year would have given you a completely different answer, and why?
  • Your category list decided your finding. Show me two outflows that could honestly have gone in either of two categories, and tell me what that does to your gap figure.

How far a student can take it

starterYou log every outflow from one purse for fourteen days without a gap, total it by category, open the sealed guess, and put your questions to one stranger who handles money for a living.
practitionerYou choose and defend your own category list, cite any borrowed budgeting method to its source, and produce one chart a stranger reads correctly without you explaining what the two bars mean.
researcherYou write the categories and the recording rule before day one, justify fourteen days rather than seven, and quantify how much of the outflow you probably missed and which way that biases the gap.
contributorYou set your gap against published work on how far people misjudge their own spending, defend your categories to an accountant who disagrees, and publish the anonymised totals openly so anybody can recompute them.

If you want to go further

Run the same fourteen-day log on a second purse in a different household and set the two category charts side by side, per week, with no names on either.

When it goes wrong

  • If nobody replies to your interview requests - then stop writing and go to a shop that has stood on the same street for years, at the quiet hour, and ask the person behind the counter two questions while they work.
  • If your before and after look the same - then report that as the finding, check the daily rows to see whether the change was actually kept on all fourteen days, and look for the category that grew while your target category shrank.
  • If you could not catch every outflow - then log one category completely rather than all of them badly, state on every chart that the figure covers that category only, and mark every reconstructed amount as estimated.
  • If you run out of time - then keep both fortnights at fourteen days and drop the optional needed-and-chosen columns rather than the log, writing on the page what you dropped and why.

Before you start

Safety and consent.
  • You never handle money that is not yours. You are logging what leaves a purse, not carrying it, spending it or holding it — if the purse belongs to somebody else, they move every rupee and you write the row.
  • Nobody's spending is logged without their explicit permission, asked again every time you log, and the log stops the day they ask it to stop, without them having to give a reason. A shop till is logged only with the owner's written permission, and the shop is never named in anything you publish.
  • Nothing that identifies an account goes anywhere near this project. No card numbers, no account numbers, no PINs, no passwords, no photographs of cards or statements — not in the log, not in the chart, not in the video, not in a screenshot. Nobody's income is written down or published; you record only what left the purse.
  • The optional needed, chosen and neither split applies to your own spending and to nothing else. Do not sort another person's outflows into it, do not write it up as a judgement of anybody, and if anything in the log would embarrass the person who holds the purse, it comes out of the shared version before it is shared.

Run this with a class

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The other eleven

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