Do you use an expense tracking app? Or, how do you keep track of your expenses? Do you even keep track?
My wife and I are retired and we’re doing okay financially. But we like to track our expenses. We’ve tried different apps but they were never simple enough. They try to make them feature-rich but in the end to track expenses they’d be too complex to use regularly.
I like things simple. We both do.
At the beginning of the month I created a spreadsheet with 2 tabs:
Monthly expenses, and
Fixed, Annual expenses.
Each tab has 3 columns:
A = amount; this column has no title but it’s first row has the total of the column’s entries = the month’s total expenditures to date
B = date; this column’s title also lists the monthly spending cap
C = description; free text, can be anything here
I could add a 4th column, for category. As the months and this year goes, we’ll see if that is wanted.
The top row is fixed (for scrolling) and column A totals at the top. It’s quick and simple. We use Google Sheets and we have the app on our phones.
My plan as each month ends is to move that month to the right of tab #2 (Fixed, Annual expenses) so that the historical data is retained but you’d have to scroll to the right to see it. The current month would always be the first tab when you open the spreadsheet.
With today being the ides of March we can already see that we’ve spent more than half of what we’d like to spend for the month. We’re 22% over budget.
I’ve got more month than money, right now, for March.
What are your tricks? Do you have more money than month? Or more month than money?
I have an excel spreadsheet to track things. It works great.
We’re actually ahead of my predictions from 2011.
My budget is basically a yearly thing though, not monthly. Some months are going to be higher than others. Auto Insurance is the biggest thing that throws things off. The holidays are another as are vacations.
Except for our mortgage, car payment, and money we give to our daughter for our grandson’s tuition, our bills are all paid on VISA. When our retirement funds are deposited (five sources, so 5 different days) I’ll throw a chunk on VISA and leftovers go in savings. Not much in the way of leftovers this month, and we have 2 extra, unplanned expenses, so savings may have to be tapped.
Bottom line, I have a general idea of our finances and I look at our bank accounts at least every other day. We are fortunate in that we don’t have to count pennies… yet. When times were tight in the past, I tracked the money a lot more closely.
I do have several spreadsheets but they’re mainly for reference, not tracking.
I have never used a detailed budget. What I do is simply add up the balance of my cash accounts (checking, savings, and money market) on the last day of the month. I use a spreadsheet for this, and simply compare the balances month to month. The goal is simply to have the balance go up every month. If it does, I am under budget. If it goes down, I am spending too much. Pretty simple and easy to track end of month balances.
On the times I am over budget, this is usually due to an odd or one time expense (car repair, medical bill, etc.) and I will note this on the spreadsheet. I don’t worry much about occasional month to month variations, but I do watch for long term trends. Year to year I absolutely expect to see the balances increase.
I recommend this to anyone who might be daunted by trying to use a detailed budget. If you are consistently over budget, then you can drill down using a detailed budget if you need to, but I think most people know where they are overspending.
That’s what we’d been doing, for years. Our budget was paying off the CC each month. We’ve been fortunate that we never had to count pennies, but now it’s nice to track expenses more closely. We’ll see if this ‘sticks’ for us.
I tried an online budget years ago and gave up after a month.
We are both retired, so our income is stable and inflation-proofed. It’s also spread out over the month, with some weekly, some four-weekly and some calendar-monthly. We almost never pay cash for anything, which means all financial transactions show up online, either in our (joint) bank account or on our credit card statements.
I check our bank account frequently - not so much worrying about the balance, but to keep a sharp lookout for any fraud. We’ve been lucky so far, and the bank’s security seems pretty good.
Our credit union has an option to monitor VISA and we use it, with it set to text me for all transactions over $20. That way, I can contact the fraud department immediately if necessary. But last night, the fraud folks texted me about an attempt to use our card on an app - and the attempt was $1 - to see if the card was any good, I suppose. So once again, we’re awaiting a new card. Dammit.
We went thru a stretch of years when we made multiple road trips to visit my (now late) inlaws and we’re pretty sure our number was scanned at some gas stations. We’d rarely go a year without getting a new card. This latest one may have been stolen due to an on-line purchase - who knows?
I don’t use my debit card at all - it’s on the larger of our two account. My husband occasionally uses his, but his account never has more than $200 in it. Public flogging sounds appropriate for fraudsters.
Cash? What is this thing you speak of called cash?
Cash is so rarely used these days. I carry a few bills for Just In Case (the electronic systems can go down).
It is soooo annoying when that happens. My bank is uber alert to any possible fraud activities. I’ve gotten a replacement card almost annually. Very annoying.
I’ve got a CC system:
one CC for everyday purchases — this is the CC that usually trips a fraud alert
a second CC for online bill payments — this CC rarely trips a fraud alert and it rarely changes; if this ever has to change it is a royal PITA contacting all the accounts and give them the new CC information; thankfully, that hasn’t had to happen in several years
a third CC, sometimes also a fourth CC, as backup cards — the backup CC comes into play if, e.g., CC #1 had to be replaced because of a fraud alert; CC #3 and #4 are usually with a different bank / system than CC #1 is, because sometimes CC #1’s bank system has gone down and cannot be used (once, late at night, CC #1’s bank was doing their nightly backups and their computer system got hung up; and I could not use that card)
I use the backup CCs occasionally, just to make sure they are still operational.
This might sound overly complex but I do like backups (secondary CCs). I avoid what I call any Single Points Of Failure.
Us too. The DC is Almost Never Used. It is only used for transactions at the bank. Rarely for anything else. Sometimes it comes in handy as an alternate ID card (DC has my picture); sometimes when I’ve applied for something totally unrelated, they want a second or sometimes even a third ID card — driver’s license is usually #1 for I think most of its. A DC can be ID #2. I do also carry my passport card daily, and that of course is an alternate form of ID.
For expenses and purchases we use CC and not DC. The CC companies provide some good purchase protections. Yes the DC can offer that too when it’s a VISA or MC or one of the other big systems, but I don’t want to use any card directly linked to my savings and checking account.
Maybe I overthink all of this, but, that’s the way it is.
And after the third card replacement in as many years, I created a spreadsheet with the website address of the company I pay, the account number, and the day of the month the payment is due. So I know in this case that the last 2 transactions of the month have been processed and I have until the 1st of April to change the VISA on all of them. Guess I know what I’ll be doing next week…
The advice above about NOT using your debit card for purchases should be well understood, at least by folk on this board.
My CCs allow up to 50+ days of free credit, so long as I pay in full on the due date, and I have a direct debit to make sure that happens. CCs also offer much better redress if a transaction goes wrong.
Judging by the comments on here, fraud is more common in the USA than here in England, although it does obviously happen.
My wife does all of our budgeting. She does it on an excel spreadsheet.
Our monthly income comfortably exceeds our expenditures, so we don’t really need to “track” expenditures. We budget generously for all recurring/anticipated expenses. There is a certain amount included every week for “incidental expenditures.” Could be anything from theater tickets to eating out, unanticipated household repairs, or buying clothing. If we spend it all one week/month, we simply wait until the next week/month.
If we anticipate spending anything over $100 or so, we look at the budget and expressly note where it will be accommodated. If we run a monthly excess of - say $200, and need a new washer/dryer costing $1k, we simply know that that uses up our excess for the next 5 months. So we try to avoid unnecessary large expenses for that time.
When we do our budget for the upcoming year, we figure in any anticipated large expenses such as travel, gifts to kids, etc. We budget so as to keep $20k available for emergencies. At the end of the year we generally have some surplus to add to savings/investments.
I use Quicken, which basically works the same as y’all’s spreadsheets for me. Pretty much like digital check registers. Once a month I download my transactions into Quicken, categorize them and look for mistakes. Then I enter all of my upcoming known income and expenses for the month. This lets me know when I can pay off my credit cards. Then I see how much I have left over and throw the rest into my IRA and/or HYSA.
I do the same each month for my mom using her Quicken account.
I don’t really budget - like, “Oh boy I’m spending more than usual on food this month!” - I just sort of let it ride and make sure I make good choices when making purchases.
No criticism - I understand different people can do similar things differently, with neither being better or worse. Just curious - in what circumstances do the both of you need to “look at it remotely”?
Kinda one reason my wife does the budget is that we don’t see a need for BOTH of us to do it, and could see some issues if 2 people were inputting and making changes. And anytime I have a question about finances or she wants to discuss something, it is easy for me to say, “Next time you have your computer out…” or she can say, “Come over here and look at this…” or “I printed this out…”
I have been using You Need a Budget for at least fifteen years. I’m honestly not sure how I would manage money without it. In my early 20s I had no idea how to handle money and my finances were a disaster. YNAB makes it easy, almost gamified. Plus they have a fun business culture and excellent customer support.
I am the primary manager of household finances. I do the budget and my husband does the investments. We do consult with one another on both, however the minutia of investments belong to him and the minutia of the household budget belong to me. I review purchases daily so if something comes in that shouldn’t be there, I know about it immediately. I can tell you at any given time how much we have allotted for say, clothing, or the next time we need to replace an appliance. You can also set goals to budget out for regular annual expenses like car insurance, vacations, and yearly subscriptions. I can tell you right now, without even looking, that we are well over budget for groceries this month.
YNAB has made it really easy to see if we can afford a mortgage payment. I just created a budget category called Imaginary Mortgage and before I distribute any of next month’s funds, I pay that category and then see how far I can make the rest of our income go. This is crucial because we are on a variable income, so we have leaner months and then months where we have quite a lot to play with. So far we have made it four months with what I consider a pretty ambitious mortgage payment. These are the leanest months of the year, so I’m feeling good about this.
We save/invest at least 40% of our income. Most of the rest is spent on basic needs, health and childcare. We have a lot of little extras (I have a ton of app subscriptions, all of which are tracked in YNAB) but they don’t add up to much. We won’t be able to save this much with a mortgage so we will probably have to make some lifestyle adjustments. Or maybe just find something cheaper.
But isn’t it nice to know that in advance? We understand the trade-offs before the decision is made.
My wife and I pretty much figure we can spend $100 w/o discussing it with each other. Anything larger, we usually discuss - not so much as to get agreement/approval, but mainly to ensure that it won’t crimp anything in the budget. Do you have anything like that?
Actually, I’m not sure we even have that sort of agreement anymore. I recall when we were young and broke, it was $50. Now, I can’t imagine a situation in which I would be out and about and would spend $100 without having previously mentioned it to her.
With her, she does the books. And we carry zero debt. As far as I’m concerned, if she thinks it fits in the budget out of current income, she can spend whatever she wants without telling me ahead of time. And if she says she bought some clothing, jewelry, or whatever, I never even ask her what it cost.
My husband and I each have a discretionary spending category where we can do whatever we want with that money. We don’t have a hard and fast rule about what expenses must be discussed, but we tend to consult for anything involving both of us. For example, when I bought an end table for our living room, I made sure he could stand looking at it and was okay with the price. Same with the new microwave.
Sometimes I just make decisions, especially when we have a little more financial flexibility. I occasionally make donations without checking with him first. Even without a hard and fast rule I can’t remember a time in recent memory where he was upset I bought something without consulting him. We are more or less on the same page when it comes to money. I’m definitely spendier but within reason. We would never make a major purchase without consulting each other.
The only time he was mad about something I bought was the octopus cookie jar incident, and that’s become a household joke.
We’ve been fortunate in that we’re both not spenders. But when we want to buy something we just buy it. They’re small expenses. We’ve been fortunate in that we are both savers. And we’ve never really had to worry about money. We have simple needs and wants. Throughout our marriage we invested simply, index funds, and we let it ride through the market’s ups and downs. We are long-term investors. We are happy with what we have. We’ve been in the same house ever since Day 1 — many would consider it a ‘starter house’ but it’s been a good house for us.
We carry debt, but it’s debt with low interest. Why pay off a mortgage that’s costing us 3% when our index fund is making 9%? Two cars ago, Jeep was offering 0% financing, so instead of paying cash we financed it.
I don’t know of this answers your question.
ETA — @Spice_Weasel I’d give you a hard time about an octopus cookie jar too!
