Tracking your spending

[beachfire]

Starting to think through the details of retirement life. Hopefully a year away. For those that track expenses is there a tool you use or have you just set up a spreadsheet with your budget and input spending each week/month? Thanks

 

[mystang52]

I started tracking our expenses many years ago, and since then have tweaked our budget as necessary. To your question, I've only used a spreadsheet. I'm also a rabid fan of budgeting, so I sort my expenses into a handful of categories.
Knowing our expenses, and the budget protocol, made for easy retirement planning, and future planning as well.

 

[Carpediem]

Mint.com is working great for me. I really wanted to use Quicken but I encountered too many bugs and issues. As they say, YMMV. Good luck.

 

[Tallman4123]

I use Personal Capital for tracking my expenses as well as my investment performance. My understanding is that there are more flexible online expense tracking tools (such as Mint), but for the combination of both expense and investment tracking, I find PC to be more than adequate.

 

[Bigdawg]

I use Personal Capital for tracking my expenses as well as my investment performance. My understanding is that there are more flexible online expense tracking tools (such as Mint), but for the combination of both expense and investment tracking, I find PC to be more than adequate.

+1

 

[euro]

Depends on how much detail you need. Lots of folks use quicken (or similar). I was mainly interested in "total expenses" for the three years before ER, so I funneled ALL my bills through one account and that made it easy to just download and compute.

 

[braumeister]

Several of us use Moneydance. Runs on any computer and syncs seamlessly with its iPhone version so you can enter expenses while away from home.

I used to be a Quicken user but got fed up with its bugs. I've used Moneydance exclusively for everything for over four years now.

 

[Car-Guy]

When I tracked spending, I just used an Excel spreadsheet. Haven't tracked spending since well before I retired. I don't even track (balance) my checkbooks anymore. I'll glance at my accounts on-line about once a month to look for erroneous charges but that's about it.

I track my annual NW but that's about as much detailed as I care about.

 

[2017ish]

I've used quicken downloads daily (save for when on vacation or in trial mode) for over 25 years. Very detailed spending/investing history--much of which is irrelevant, but it has made it easy to project our baseline expenses in retirement.

Given the cost (which is likely to go up substantially with impending subscription model) and ramping up headaches, I'd not recommend it to a newcomer.

 

[joeea]

Starting to think through the details of retirement life. Hopefully a year away. For those that track expenses is there a tool you use or have you just set up a spreadsheet with your budget and input spending each week/month? Thanks

For a long time, I have used a spreadsheet that I update monthly.

I have several tabs on it, one being EXPENSES. It attempts to capture each category of spending, and express it as a monthly cost. I review it monthly, compare it to my bank and credit card statements and update it accordingly. It doesn't vary all that much from month to month.

It takes only a few minutes per month and gives me a great feel for my current expenses. From there, I can easily see which expenses will go away and which will remain years down the road.

As an aside, the other tabs are INCOME, ASSETS, NET WORTH, PROJECTION, STOCKS, BONDS, HOMES, 529s, CREDIT, INSURANCE, CARS, TIMELINE, RMDs, SSA. Basically, it's one spreadsheet with my entire financial life in one place.

 

[Bamaman]

I'm too busy enjoying life than to take time to follow my expenses.

I've got too many other things in life taking my time--like taking care of grandchildren, maintaining properties and being a perpetual traveler.

 

[Nightcap]

I use Mint. Tried Personal Capital, got tired of the phone calls and emails for free consultations. Every month, I transfer spending category totals to a spreadsheet. This is also where I can tweak things to make my projection more accurate. For example, the fact that I spent $XX on a kitchen renovation last year is not relevant to planning my annual budget unless I'm going to repeat that remodel this year.

 

[Meadbh]

For the first three years of ER I tallied and categorized all expenses every month using a customized Excel spreadsheet. I don't do that any more because I think I have a pretty good handle on my spending. Instead I now do an annual summary. If something changes, I can easily resume the monthly expense accounting.

I like Excel because it's free, it's private, and I can customize it to answer the questions I want answered.

 

[euro]

For the first three years of ER I tallied and categorized all expenses every month using a customized Excel spreadsheet. I don't do that any more because I think I have a pretty good handle on my spending. Instead I now do an annual summary. If something changes, I can easily resume the monthly expense accounting.

I like Excel because it's free, it's private, and I can customize it to answer the questions I want answered.

Excel is free? I don't think so, but I'd love it!

 

[Meadbh]

Excel is free? I don't think so, but I'd love it!

I already own a licence for Excel (for Mac) so there is no incremental cost. However, if you do not have Excel and do not wis to purchase it, alternatives are available, such as Google Spreadsheet.

 

[KCinBAMA]

Mint for tracking expenses only. However, I've had to customize it with new categories, tags and automatic search features. Also, I've had it lose my data at least twice over several years. Although I've looked at other solutions, I came back to Mint and just started exporting all my data monthly in case of another data loss. Exporting my data also gives me the opportunity to import into a spreadsheet and run all the reports I choose to create.

 

[kaudrey]

I use Excel, but I only track large categories. So, I track things like Real Estate (mortgage, property tax, insurance), Capital Expenditures (house improvements), Travel, Health (insurance and doc visits), Car, and Taxes (Income, FICA etc), and of course - Savings.


Everything else gets lumped into "Living Expenses".


I'm quite frugal and have never had a problem meeting my savings targets, so I only keep track of the big stuff.

 

[W2R]

Starting to think through the details of retirement life. Hopefully a year away. For those that track expenses is there a tool you use or have you just set up a spreadsheet with your budget and input spending each week/month? Thanks

I don't have a budget really. I just track my spending to the penny in a spreadsheet (Open Office, which is like Excel), and input it every day or two. I balance my wallet and bank account and credit card with what I have in the spreadsheet, to make sure I didn't forget anything.

In my financial/retirement workbook, I have a separate spending spreadsheet for each year. Each of these spending spreadsheets has spending for January, then below that February and below that March, and so on. Each month has a few lines for income (to make sure my SS was deposited and so on). After that, each individual expense with date, category, subcategory, amount, and comments on each line. These are in order by category. I have a lot of this filled out and copy/pasted to each month before I begin, and then add the amounts and dates for each expense, and add additional lines as needed.

Then I also have a summary with each month's spending in each major category, that I fill out as the year progresses. There are other analyses and summaries that I do at will throughout the year. For example, I like to project my year's spending and see how I am doing thus far.

I love doing this! I laughingly call it my "Fun with Excel". It really helps me in the eternal effort to spend my money on what I value. It is exciting to do the monthly analyses too.

 

[fritz]

We've always budgeted our living expenses and use a simple one page excel spreadsheet that requires just changes to expense inputs (formulas take care of the rest). We write down our cash withdrawals (not what we spend it on) and CC purchases separately, then record them monthly in the excel spreadsheet. Keeping it simple keeps it from becoming too time-consuming and something unpleasant to avoid doing.

 

[jim584672]

I use LibreCalc. Each tab is a year. Sums on the bottom. Leave a blank day for 2/29, that way the years can be reused.

Date_____Food_____Gas____ ...
1/1/17
1/2/17

 

[SheitlQueen]

I don't have a "budget", but I do keep track of every cent I spend.
I just use a spread sheet, divided into spending categories. I enter
everything I spend every day to make sure I don't forget anything.

It's a way to make sure I don't let spending get out of hand, although
I am cheap so that's not likely to ever happen

It's also a way to reassure myself I'm never going to run out of money.

 

[Fedup]

I kept track of two years as in recording them two years before I retired to see what kind of expense I have. After retirement, I used the bank statements monthly and record exactly the bank statements. The beginning account subtracts spending should be what the ending balance. This is how I keep track of spending. All on Excel spreadsheet.
Edit to add, all credit card payments are under one category per bank. I don't keep track per category of what I spend under Costco. I use the KISS method.

 

[TrophyWife]

I use monopoly money I have a loose budget. One the 3rd of the month, automatic transfers move money to several sub savings accounts for non-monthly bills including property taxes, travel, car insurance, dental, car maintenance,life insurance etc. The other bills are set to pay automatically and a set amount transfers to a checking account to cover credit card spending.

I put as much spending as possible on credit cards to get free travel. I place monopoly money in an envelope equal to what I have in the credit card account. Every time I spend money, I take out monopoly money out of the envelope. This acts as a place holder. I can see exactly how much I have so I don't overspend. When there's no more monopoly money in the envelope, that's it for the month.

We've done it this way for years and it works great for us. It a nice way to track without accounting for every penny. We just round up or down to $5. Everything goes on a credit card. We only have a small cash amount each month for the barber and farmers market

And then when the other non-monthly bills come up-I transfer the money and bill pay it through my checking account.

 

[athena53]

I'm a numbers person so it comes naturally. I use Excel and enter everything manually because some of the credit card transactions have to be broken into multiple categories (e.g. Costco purchases, which may include groceries as well as home maintenance stuff and items I donate to charity). It also helps me track where I could cut back if I had to- my "core expenses" are pretty low. Finally, I'm seeing the happy results of the downsizing 2 years ago; it cost more than expected after we fixed the old place to sell and made changes to the new place, but utilities are SO much less here.

Last month I took a look at the substantial travel expenses YTD and broke it down further into 2017, 2018 and 2019 (I have a deposit on a cruise I'll likely take in early 2019). I felt better when I saw that $3,000 of it was for future years. Pivot tables are your friend!

 

[Sue J]

I've tracked expense for years, I just enjoy doing it. I currently use Numbers for Mac but any spreadsheet like Google Docs or Excel work just as well. Before computers I did this on a yellow pad,

All the automatic payments like utilities, insurances, property tax just get carried over every month. Then I track daily expenses in three major categories - Groceries, Gas and Other. All these "normal" monthly expenses add up to less than DH's pension so there is a line item for Savings (which is my favorite category!)

Non-monthly and lumpy expenses (medical co-pays and deductibles, travel, home repairs, car repairs that are not maintenance, etc) get accounted for after the normal expenses. This way I can compare how we do with the monthly expenses and then overall with total spending.

The explanation makes it sound more complicated than it is, it's really very simple.

I use Mint. Tried Personal Capital, got tired of the phone calls and emails for free consultations.

I signed up for Personal Capital and then removed my phone number from my profile so they couldn't call.