Letting go of Tracking Every Expense

[slowtraveler]

I notice tracking expenses is becoming more and more exhausting. I've already seen the big patterns and have a savings rate over 80%. Is tracking expenses something others here have taken on and later let go of?

I can always look at my bank/credit card statements to see the net inflow/outflow.

[wolf]

In the beginning I tracked every Euro. I had a big spreadsheet, in which I had many different expense categories. With time, and with lower expenses, I didn't see any meaning in it anymore to do it in such detail. So, as you said, I let go of it a bit.

My tracking nowadays is very basic. Of course it is easier to track small/few expenses in comparison to many. So I categorize my spending in the following categories: mobility (e.g. bike repair, etc.), travel&trips, housing&fix expenses, eating&"living", and others. It is very easy to track, because I can calculate eating&"living" by subtracting it from my bank statements.

Although my tracking is very basic, that doesn't mean I don't think carefully before I spend some money. That is another issue. I understand, that there is (almos) no sense to think for xx minutes before spending e.g. 10 euros. The time is more worth thinking about such 10 Euros. Well, that is another issue.

[Bankai]

Although I've not stopped tracking, I did simply it and only spend on it a fraction of the time I used to. No more collecting recipes and working out what was 'food' vs. 'household' vs 'alcohol' when I spend in grocery stores. No more wondering what did I use that £20 cash on a month before (it just goes into its own category).

My current tracking looks as follows:

1) download bank and credit card statements in xls
2) paste transactions into expense tab on the finance spreadsheet
3) conditional formatting works out categories
4) add up totals per category, eyeballing if something extraordinary doesn't stand out
5) paste totals into the budget tab
6) savings rates, averages etc. calculated automatically

All in all, this doesn't take more than 10-15 minutes a month and I'm quite happy to keep it that way.

I also now refuse to worry about small one-off expenses, i.e. if people from my work go on team lunch, I'll tag along and not worry about the £10 it costs once every couple of months.

[Seppia]

I have a simple tracking system in place*, and I think simplicity is the key to consistency.
I still track 95%+ (because I may forget something minor from time to time, that’s why I often round up all minor expenses to the next euro) of my spending.



*i have a notes file on my phone with my main categories and just update the number at every expense I make, then I transfer on a spreadsheet at the end of the month.

[BaldEagle]

I use GNUCash for tracking by importing bank statements QIF files (debit, credit card). GNUCash learns categorization from user's manual categorizations. It uses double entry accounting and provides all necessary reports - income statements, balance sheet, expenses piecharts, ...
Once you have the workflow setup it takes very little time (less than 10 minutes per month) and effort to track everything.

[classical_Liberal]

...

[IlliniDave]

The answer for me is no. I haven't stopped and don't feel the need to. My system is pretty accurate plus or minus the occasional typo or inadvertent omission (I don't audit) and takes less than 15 minutes a week to maintain, most weeks less than 5, and I often skip weeks. It's manual and involves typing a few numbers (typically about 10-12) into pre-formatted spreadsheets each week. Receipts are easy to keep because I carry a wallet. For automatic billing I download my CC transactions monthly. Occasionally I have to divide up expenses on a single receipt but I have a little spreadsheet calculator that will do that if its more involved than segregating one or two items from a grocery store receipt.

The spreadsheet templates were designed 7 years ago and admittedly it took a modest amount of work the first two years to optimize them to my taste, but since then it's been 95% just plugging in the numbers.

At the same time I would say a person could do perfectly well with a looser monitoring of spending data. It's a matter of temperament I think. I like to anchor some things in data and personal finance is one of them. If it feels exhausting and you are not innately motivated to improve your system, then the resulting data is probably not important to you and likely your time would be better spent doing different things.

[The Old Man]

Tracking expenses is done automatically with minimal effort on my part. Virtually every payment is done by credit card or check. Tracking is done by Personal Capital (in the past by Yodlee). Sometimes I have to reclassify a transaction. These days I don't pay close attention to the expenses.

[jacob]

Pay cash for personal/discretionary/food. Utilities are regular and constant. Other purchases are so few you remember them.

This way you'll know what the upper cap on your spending is w/o having to track. The need to track is a credit card issue.

[cmonkey]

I've pondered this myself and have concluded I enjoy it enough to not stop tracking, at least for now. I like seeing the concrete numbers there for me to see instead of trying to guess where I'm at. Maybe I'll feel differently down the road.

It shouldn't be a chore to track, though, as others have said. The key to consistency is simplicity. For us, purchases are sufficiently far enough apart that I just log it immediately after each expense occurs. It takes just a few minutes weekly.

I would like to pay cash for more stuff but we spend just enough between the two of us to bring in a CC dividend stream equivalent to a 5 figure investment earning 3%.

[Gilberto de Piento]

I am doing more than I would recommend to anyone, but I track in three ways and it works for me:
1. I write down all my expenses on a post it note in my wallet (roughly) as they happen. I enter the monthly bills there before they actually happen since they are predictable. This way I can see what my monthly spending is so I know if I need to cut back or not to meet my monthly goal. Having to write down the numbers also seems to make the expenses more real for me.
2. I let Mint track expenses for me (in exchange for them having my financial data, nothing is free). Mint also adapts to manual categorization so you don't have to change "television" to "internet" every month.
3. At the end of each month I download transactions from Mint and paste them into a spreadsheet and then create a journal post here. It takes about 30 minutes though sometimes when things are complicated it can be more involved than it should be.

If I wanted to cut back I would drop 1 and 3. For the most part Mint does a good job of tracking expenses and other financial data, though it doesn't calculate anything related to FIRE.

Jacob has the right idea though. It is probably better to spend so little that you don't need tracking than to track very carefully.

[ThisDinosaur]

The only reason to track is to make improvements. I can track annual spending by category on my bank and credit card statements. So I can use the Pareto principle to focus changes where I need to.

[prognastat]

I currently use mint and personal capital to handle the tracking and I just need to spot check it once in a while.

I would like to eventually program my own system for tracking it all so I understand everything it is doing and have full control to expand the features to my liking and know my data isn't being stored and sold.

[RealPerson]

I track meticulously, primarily as a conversation basis with my wife. If it wasn't for that, I don't think I would track. You could decide to track when you see your savings rate go down or some other alarm bell to show slippage in your budgetary habits.

[arcyallen]

We track 99% of our purchases via Mint. If anything, it helps us remember how much we spent on things and lets us recognize when certain categories (eating out) get out of control. In the beginning it was critical, but now after a year or so it's simply helpful.