hanki.dev

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

#journal #finance

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