Poll of the Day > Do you track your spending?

(+) Yeah! (+)

If you don't track your spending, how do you know how much money you actually have?

I use my bank's online tools. It's way more convenient especially since it doesn't cost anything, I don't have to go to an ATM to check my balance, I can access it from anywhere and I know exactly where my money has gone.
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I do it all myself in an encrypted spreadsheet.
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I use Google Sheet to track my debit and credit card spending and have my spending organized into income/deposits, gas, food, entertainment, and savings/miscellaneous. Miscellaneous is pretty broad though and include items such as my internet, insurance, investments, car payment, etc.

I do tweak how I label my spending sometimes though. For example if I spent $300 on food for an office birthday luncheon and got reimbursed for it, I'll label the reimbursement under "Deposit" but would label the spending as "Miscellaneous" instead of "Food".

I was using something got Mint that automatically track my spending but the algorithm of how it organizes my spending fluctuate. I know I can manually re-label stuff but it got tedious.
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I export my debit/credit statements into excel and sort them there.

_AdjI_ posted...

I export my debit/credit statements into excel and sort them there.

That would make my life a lot easier except I prefer using the date of purchase and some online systems are a day or two behind. Still, realistically at the end of the month whether I bought that burger on Monday or Tuesday is kinda irrelevant plus I tend to update my spreadsheets slowly so doing once a month might be more ideal. I might just give your approach a try.

Speaking of keeping track of your spending, it really bugs me when some gas stations or restaurants have a different transaction name. Dunno how many gas stations I've been to where the name of transaction is different from the name of the gas station.
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I use an ancient copy of Microsoft Money. When I get home, I type in all my receipts and then when my bank statements come in, I balance the accounts. This way I can catch when I get overcharged (or rarely, undercharged).

I already know I spend about $10 on food daily, $175 for my car, all that.

Seems like a waste of time. If I want to I can check my bank site to look at all the things I bought, what's costing me the most money.
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My bank has an app I use. And text banking, as well. I use that stuff. Its good enough for what I need...

InfestedAdam posted...

_AdjI_ posted...

I export my debit/credit statements into excel and sort them there.

That would make my life a lot easier except I prefer using the date of purchase and some online systems are a day or two behind. Still, realistically at the end of the month whether I bought that burger on Monday or Tuesday is kinda irrelevant plus I tend to update my spreadsheets slowly so doing once a month might be more ideal. I might just give your approach a try.

Speaking of keeping track of your spending, it really bugs me when some gas stations or restaurants have a different transaction name. Dunno how many gas stations I've been to where the name of transaction is different from the name of the gas station.

Happens with a lot of things, tbh...
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No. My spending doesn't approach my income.
captpackrat posted...

If you don't track your spending, how do you know how much money you actually have?

These things called bank and other account statements.
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I'll double-check on my bank's website when I have money to work with. Otherwise I'll do ballpark estimates in my head, rounding down the nearest dollar or so in my budget and rounding up to the nearest dollar on expenditures. It works fine... again, when there's money to work with.
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I do plan out my spending via a word document. This helps my budget well and stops me overspending.
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Net gain/loss of each month is usually all I look at.
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InfestedAdam posted...

That would make my life a lot easier except I prefer using the date of purchase and some online systems are a day or two behind. Still, realistically at the end of the month whether I bought that burger on Monday or Tuesday is kinda irrelevant plus I tend to update my spreadsheets slowly so doing once a month might be more ideal. I might just give your approach a try.

Yeah, I usually have to wait a couple days for my statements to catch up, so I do it on a monthly(ish) basis. I'm fine with just having a review of the previous month's spending, rather than tracking it day to day. Paying off my credit card keeps me aware of how much I'm spending anyway.

Not really, beyond ocassionally checking my balance and paying off my credit card.

I don't tend to spend a lot though.
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I track it in my head.
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