You have to be anal motivated. And yes, we use Quicken's "split" feature to track transactions with multiple categories. I even split the credit-card rebates among the various categories according to their weighted percentages.Dreamer said:I am motivated to track our spending in 2007 also. I never seem to do it for very long though. Just out of curiousity, when one goes to a Super Wal-Mart or someplace similar and you buy lots of different things, such as groceries, toiletries, clothing, pet supplies, misc, do you go home and sort out the different categories? It just seems like such a hassle or am I being too anal about it and that is why I don't keep up with it.
In the back of my mind, I am asking myself if I really want to start keeping track right now, because I am leaving for Hawaii at 4:00 AM tomorrow. Do I really want to write down everytime I buy a snack and do I really want to know how much I spent?
How does everyone stay motivated to keep track of it all?
I think the motivation comes from seeing the progress toward your goals and from being able to answer questions like "How's our entertainment spending doing?" or "When's the last time we had to fix this $%&^ car?!?"
I wouldn't try to start the New Year's resolution in Hawaii, especially since you're paying visitor prices and will rapidly be discouraged by the apparent trend!
Same here... we've been tracking everything since 1992 and have over 100K transactions. Habit eventually takes over if the motivation doesn't.saluki9 said:Maybe it's because I've been doing it so long, it doesn't seem like that much of a problem to do it. My Quicken files go back to when I was 16 (I'm 29 now) so it's just part of my life. And, yes when I go to Target or Walmart I do just sit there and use the built in calculator on Quicken to sort out the different categories. I do it every day when I wake up, takes maybe 2 minutes max a day.
You shouldn't make yourself miserable. For example, spouse will mark up her receipts to show me the splits, but she lets me do all the data entry. If tracking everything seems to be too much work, then start on something that you'd like to track-- one or two categories like entertainment or groceries. Then add more if you're motivated!