Finally stopped tracking our spending - am I missing any reasons to do it?

[Koolau]

Another vote for the fun plus interesting aspect of it. Yeah crazy to some extent.

My yearly NW snap shot is all the fun I need in terms of tracking. And, yes, it is sorta fun.

 

[Montecfo]

Hi Scuba,

We are in a similar situation and have wondered this same thing I still track expenses to this point and have all the data back to the early 90s. I still find it valuable especially since I have a very large HSA and so need medical details over many years And those can be in your check register, credit cards, old cancelled cards etc. Also I have all details there about major purchases, trips where and how much, auto maintenance, etc.

But I have wondered about stopping too. I will probably look for ways to streamline. I mean if I were not doing this (such as after I meet the Lord) my wife will not be doing it. I'm sure of that

So that gives me pause. But it remains valuable to me.

 

[brett]

I realize that I am very much an outlier when it comes to these things.

My numbers/calculations are all based on after tax. We have never had a set budget, pre or post retirement, nor have we tracked expenses by categories or even on a spreadsheet.

I do not include the value of our home, it is only about 10 percent, or the imputed value of my DB in my perception of our net worth. We need somewhere to live. The DB is contingent on me waking up each morning. For me it is strictly a cash flow item.

I prefer to measure our net worth based on those moving parts that we can currently manage/impact on an ongoing basis.

I do not feel any better or sense of financial wizzardly if our house increases in value by $100K since we have no intention of selling or leveraging our home equity in any way.

I know that this is strange but it has worked for us over many years.

 

[youbet]

No formal, detailed tracking of spending here. All our spending passes through our check register, which we do maintain. The only broad category in the register is the monthly Visa payment. If that looks out of line and I don't recall any particular unique explanations, I can go to the Visa site and sniff around there until the light bulb goes off. So just scanning the paper register I can see how much is spent and if any outliers jump out at me.

More important to us is whether we are enjoying life doing things as we are. I know I am. And I sit DW down from time to time and we get philosophical about how we're spending our time. If she's content and happy, I'm good.

Put another way, since we naturally live a simple, low key life, and our retirement income supports that without concern, the satisfaction from how we spend our time and effort ranks higher than knowing our cell phone bill was 0.83% of last months spending, etc.

 

[Surewhitey]

I've reduced my spreadsheet to quarterly vs monthly to "simplify" my obsession. I only look at total spending for the past couple of years, using the payments to the credit cards (2) as we only spend on them... All good for the past 10 years or so.

 

[street]

My yearly NW snap shot is all the fun I need in terms of tracking. And, yes, it is sorta fun.

Yep!!!
My snapshot yearly is our account that is income coming in and spending going out. I know in December exactly what was spent for the year as a total number not itemized or a budget.

 

[Cobra9777]

I tracked spending every month by category for 25 years while working, and then another 5-6 years after retirement. But now, I just look at total cashflow in and out, along with balance changes at the end of the year.

While working, I was always trying to maximize savings. So we tracked actual spending against a budget at a very detailed level. Right after retiring, I was nervous and wanted to make sure everything was under control. None of that is necessary anymore.

Technically, we use Fidelity Full View, which functions a lot like Quicken. It automatically collects all the data and assigns categories. I look at that occasionally. But I no longer correct category assignments and I no longer split transactions. So the categories are only ~85% accurate.

I still keep track of large, discretionary spend... mainly international travel, home improvements, new car, etc. I also keep track of property tax and federal tax, which are roughly 30% of total spend. By breaking out the above, I'm able to track what I call "baseline living expenses." I do this in Excel at year-end only.

I'm aware of our FIRECalc 95% spending level. My only goal these days is to keep total spend roughly in line with that figure.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I have tracked our spending at a reasonably detailed level for 25 years. It was invaluable in planning our financial future and confirming we were financially ready to retire. Now that we’ve been retired for over 8 years, I decided I don’t really need to track it anymore. We have substantially more financial assets than we did 8 years ago, so I am thinking we no longer need to think too much about how we spend our money. The notable exceptions could be things we need for tax purposes such as medical expenses, charitable contributions, and any major capital expenditures on our home so we have a reliable record of our cost basis in the event of a future sale.

Are there any other categories or reasons to track detailed spending? I did a “macro” analysis for 2024 and looked at cash that came in, cash that went out for major non-recurring expenses such as major home renovations, and the change in total cash balance year on year, enabling me to see how much in total we spent on day to day living including travel. The “normal” cash outflow looked about the same as the last several years so I decided not to do all the detailed work to document every category of spend.

I have to admit it was rather freeing, but I’m so accustomed to tracking that I’m wondering if there is a good reason to do it.

Good for you. Now you really are Financially Independent! Enjoy your life. You've won.

 

[bada bing]

IMO, Once you realize you have more than you need (won the game) what's the point.

Kinda where I'm at.

That's me as well.
One thought occurring to me from this thread is that a personality trait associated with early retiring is probably having some threshold for spending that isn't based on how much you can easily get your hands on. My grandfather sometimes talked about people having their "money burning a hole in their pocket". It's pretty common to see people who just spend what they have on hand until it's gone. I never was that way. If I was, I'd need to track my spending more closely.

 

[pjm-7]

Yep, still create a budget for the year and generally track the monthly spending. It's a habit. I have been tracking my net worth every six months manually in a hard bound composition book (actually now on book #2). I have been doing this since 1982. Why stop now.

 

[Aerides]

We stopped too. I figure it's kinda like a diet, you know when you're overdoing it regardless how often you get on the scale.

 

[Palmtree]

I tracked our spending for a few years but never really broke it down to small catagories like food/gas/entertainment, etc. After each year I would total up all our spending for the year. After several years I noticed that our yearly burn rate was fairly consistant. After that I stopped. We are naturally frugal and are just not going to go on wild spending sprees. Every January I add up all our spending for the previous year, just to check how we're doing. In 2024 we did a LOT of NICE traveling and I thought for sure we would exceed our planned ceiling. Nope. Not even close.

 

[Scuba]

Thanks everyone for responding. It’s reassuring that so many of you have either never tracked spending in detail or have given it up. You’ve all given me confidence that despite my obsessive ways of tracking money, I can relax and just focus on the big picture. I am going to try not to give into the temptation to continue my detailed tracking!

For our portfolio, I try to keep 2-3 years of our “burn rate” less any regular income I can count on, plus any planned major expenditures such as a new car or major home improvements, invested in cash or short term fixed income. For the rest, we invest pretty aggressively, knowing that we should have time for the market to recover from any major downturns before we would have to sell depreciated assets. We also have some income streams we could turn on to further mitigate the amount we’d have to pull out during a down market. This approach has worked well for us so far.

 

[ransil]

we only started 2 years ago when we "fired" to get an idea on how much we were going to spend, we have always been cheap , so far 2 years are about the same expenses, plan to continue another couple years .

 

[ls99]

Never did. Still don't.

 

[Montecfo]

Another obsessive type here. I have explained it in another thread.

You could have just said "my screen name. Any questions?"

 

[Dtail]

You could have just said "my screen name. Any questions?"

True that.

 

[tmm99]

I don't think I'm an obsessive type, but I still track my spending, and I enjoy doing it. I want to know how much money is going to what, and I reconcile every transaction (I would know if there were any fraudulent transactions.) I also enjoy seeing/understanding the trend (due to inflation and other factors.)

I use Quicken.

I used to look at my investment performance every month as well, but I no longer do that. I occasionally check but just casually, although I keep track of my total investable assets.

 

[swakyaby]

This could potentially be dangerous. It's your spending that's important.

Yes, it could potentially be dangerous, if the spending were a significant percentage of the investment portfolio. But in the 7 years since retiring, the portfolio has doubled. If the portfolio were shrinking, I’d pay closer attention to the spending. But it hasn’t been an issue, really.

 

[Koolau]

For those who routinely track spending, do you have examples where the results changed your behavior? Mentioned elsewhere that I once tracked expenses for a year (slavishly - and to the penny if possible). Once I looked at the data, I couldn't think of a thing I wanted to change - even though there were a few minor surprises.

Just wondering.

 

[DayDreaming]

I still track my spending, not because I really need to, but because it's easy, and it does have some benefit to me. Every morning, I open Moneydance and download recent transactions for all accounts - investments, credit cards, bank checking accounts, etc. It only takes 1 keystroke. The benefits:

- I might some some suspicious charges. I have found a fraudulent credit card charge this way, and recently I saw that my homeowners insurance charged me 2x for the quarterly payment. Easy to fix when you spot it right away.
- Sanity check to see if I've already paid something: like were there any favorite charities that I forgot to donate to this year.
- To see when I purchased something. Like this computer seems slow, just how old is it?

 

[timbervest]

30 years of data on Quicken. Most of my accounts update automatically. Even though I do not budget and will likely never run out of money I still do it for three reasons: 1) perverse curiousity; 2) check for fraudulent chargers; and 3) for those time when we have to look up "who did we pay for this?" or "when did we buy that?".

 

[kcowan]

In my experience people using Quicken have a problem stopping.. after 22 years, I am fine with our annual review. Last year was 30% increase in net worth of which 4% was spent on living. So we have developed such a big buffer, that detail does not help.

 

[kgtest]

I track my budget in a macro level as I look at large NET NEW expenses against any large expenses that will not re-occur in the fiscal year. Ie... daycare! As soon as we are done with that, it will be an expense we never have again. Of course, children require constant feeding, but we can re-allocate it for now, to future goals. 529, HSA, Roth.

 

[brett]

we only started 2 years ago when we "fired" to get an idea on how much we were going to spend, we have always been cheap , so far 2 years are about the same expenses, plan to continue another couple years .

Same for us.

Went back two years and then forward two or three. Only one number concerned me...our total household burn rate. No categories, just total numbers of cash out from our current account.

Wanted to agree it to what I believed was our approximate annual burn rate in our retirement plan. It was.

Our focus and time has typically been on income items.