NW-Bound
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2008
- Messages
- 35,712
I don't break out groceries, TP, household products, alcohol, because the items are all paid on a single ticket. Too much hassle.
Restaurant receipts stand out from Costco or Safeway receipts, hence I can have them in a separate category. Similarly, separating out electric and water bills at each of my two homes takes no work, because they are billed separately and Quicken does the classification for me. Same with home insurance and car insurance. Basically, if the classification comes free due to the separate recurrent billing, I make use of it.
By using Quicken to track my expenses, all these category classifications come without me having to do much work, beyond just click on "Download all accounts", then go in and correct some mislabeling by Quicken. And I do want to check on all my accounts anyway, in order to spot fraudulent activities.
I started to track total expenses ever since I seriously thought about ER, and that was about 3 years prior to pulling the trigger. I will continue to do this, even though I currently underspend by a 6-figure number what FIRECalc says I can.
Restaurant receipts stand out from Costco or Safeway receipts, hence I can have them in a separate category. Similarly, separating out electric and water bills at each of my two homes takes no work, because they are billed separately and Quicken does the classification for me. Same with home insurance and car insurance. Basically, if the classification comes free due to the separate recurrent billing, I make use of it.
By using Quicken to track my expenses, all these category classifications come without me having to do much work, beyond just click on "Download all accounts", then go in and correct some mislabeling by Quicken. And I do want to check on all my accounts anyway, in order to spot fraudulent activities.
I started to track total expenses ever since I seriously thought about ER, and that was about 3 years prior to pulling the trigger. I will continue to do this, even though I currently underspend by a 6-figure number what FIRECalc says I can.
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