I'm an Italian student, and I'm trying to keep track of all my daily expenses, as well as my income.
My biggest problem is logistical: I've no problem analyzing my expenses once I collect the data, but I'm utterly unable to get it all! The little purchases such as coffee breaks before lectures, cocktails when going out, the occasional newspaper, etc., are impossible to track!
In the first weeks I tried to use receipts. They should be good, I thought. Well, they aren't enough. Little expenses are receipt-free, and in Italy tax evasion is high. So there is often no receipt.
Then I tried to switch to mobile: I've an Android phone, so I tried apps in the category "Personal Finance". But I've no time to unlock the smartphone, fire up the app, and fill out endless fields such as "category", "sub-category", "account", "amount", "currency"(!), etc. If I'm getting a coffee with a friend, it's very rare that I take my smartphone out, isolating myself for more than 5 seconds!
I looked at some answers proposed in questions here, such as this, this and this one. But they all provide solutions not tailored for my needs. Something somewhat good may be what's proposed by http://www.texthog.com/, but I would like to avoid, if possible, paying an ongoing fee.