It's absolute meaningless to track what you bought. Instead, you should track why you bought. Taking a taxi to the office is different than taking a taxi to the bar, and eating outside on Friday night with the boys is different than eating a lunch during workday.

I used to track what I bought, and my Friday night's expenses could look like this:

• Dine – 12€
• Alcohol – 18€
• Minigolf – 10€

Now I'd just mark it all under 1 category:

• Fun – 40€

This makes much more sense and it tells me why I use my money, not exactly what little things I bought.

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This is kinda besides the point of this post, but if you're interested here are most of my expense categories. I left out some niche stuff which isn't relevant to anyone but me.

• Daily – Groceries, transportation, sometimes lunch if I'm eating out, just general day2day stuff.
• Dine – I'm pretty lazy to make food so I eat out a lot. So this is for those cases when I eat out, not because of social situation but because I'm too lazy to make my own food.
• Fun – Night out with the boys, date night, minigolf, movie theater, traveling. You know, fun one time experiences.
• Feelgood – This is kinda like fun but... different? Mostly things I do alone (like going to a massage) or material purchases (like buying a volume of manga)
• Living – Rent, electricity, water etc.
• Home improvement – Stuff I buy to make my living space more enjoyable.
• Health – Vitamins, headspace subscribtion, medical expenses etc.
• Car expenses – Self explanatory. Could be bundled with 'Daily' but I like to keep this separate to see how much money I'm wasting on my car.
• Office – Kinda like 'Home improvement', but for my office.
• Sports – Mostly just for boulder gym membership :D
• Subscriptions – Seedbox, Spotify and Bearblog

Question, comment, or something else? Email me ✉️