Key to tracking your expenses
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.
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 ✉️