A Month of Family Finances: Exploring family spending through a digital diary tool
Written on August 29th , 2025 by Ilona Pinter
The Family Finances project trialled a web-based diary tool with parents in Scotland and England to capture insights into household income and spending on low incomes. Early feedback suggests the diaries were both eye-opening for participants and a valuable addition to the project’s wider research on poverty and financial hardship.
Why Diaries Matter
In spring 2025, we conducted a new phase of data collection as part of our multi-method Family Finances research project. This involved parent participants completing income and expenditure diaries through a web-based app to provide further insights into how families experience life on Universal Credit and other benefits. The Family Finances project takes a comparative approach to investigating the difference that Scottish Child Payment makes to families who are on a low income and are receiving mainstream benefits. A key way in which we have done this so far is through telephone interviews with parents in Scotland — who receive Scottish Child Payment — as well as parents in England who do not. Our team is also analysing national survey data to examine poverty, material deprivation and food insecurity trends in Scotland and the rest of the UK. The online diaries are another tool we’re using to collect data and contribute to our findings.
Our diary approach was informed by other studies that have previously used expenditure diaries to examine relational coping strategies (Young, 2022), financial exclusion (Biosca et al, 2020) and life on low income (Power et al, 2024). We were especially keen to learn from other web-based approaches like the Changing Realities and the Real Accounts projects. These helped us develop a bespoke web-based app that allowed parents to log on and input their income and spending information on behalf of their family for a period of a month.
Designing the Digital Diary Tool
Following a period of desk-based research, the app was developed in consultation with and testing conducted by parent participants who had already taken part in qualitative interviews. Speaking to parents with lived experience of receiving low income benefits and piloting the app with several participants in advance helped us to find the best ways to capture information from busy parents in a straightforward but consistent way.
We wanted to strike a balance by capturing a lot of detail on expenses for their household, themselves and their children, while also making sure that the work involved wasn’t too onerous and intrusive. Building trust with parents was a key consideration; making it easy to understand and use was another.
Parents’ feedback was used to adapt the app and produce a detailed user guide for the online tool. As a result we increased the incentives provided to parents for taking part, provided regular reminders and support to parents during the data collection, and ensured that there was flexibility in when information could be entered.
Participation and Data Collected
After recruiting 40 parents to take part in the expenditure diaries, 28 parents signed up to the app — 20 from Scotland and 8 from England. Most of the participants (22) filled in the diaries regularly for the month between 26th May and 25th June 2025. The app asked parents to fill in different categories of income, such as employment income, benefits, loans and support from friends and families. They also filled in information about expenditure for the household like rent, utility bills and food; expenses for children like extra curricular activities, treats and toys; and expenditure on adults’ needs like for health and personal care, leisure time and work related costs. This information could be filled in daily or weekly, to fit around parents’ often busy schedules.
Reflections and Next Steps
Although we didn’t do a detailed evaluation of the diary method, some parents provided feedback on their experience. A number of parents reflected that the experience of filling in the diaries was ‘eye opening’ and insightful on their income and outgoings.
We are currently in the process of analysing the data and will be incorporating findings into future outputs. In the meantime, please get in touch with any questions.
Image credit: Helena Lopes on Unsplash
