For those of you who track every spend

B0bbyEwing

I know some of you use spreadsheets, others use specific money managing software but this is a question to those of you who input all your spends.

This is the first year I've really put in an effort to log every spend. I have categorised as much as I can think possible - as I want to see exactly where money is going.

For example, a spend in Sainsbury's could be a number of categories rather than just "Supermarket". "Clothes" could be bought as could plants for the "garden" and just from that 1 spend I have to then break down the receipt in to 3 categories. 

A category that still irritates me is "Misc" as it's wide ranging but it's where I put things that I don't have other categories (regular spends) for.

Just curious how others input their spends as I'm happy to pick ideas from how others manage theirs if I feel it's something that'll help me.

blue.peter

I do pretty much the same as you. AceMoney is my preferred tool. It makes splitting of a spend between multiple categories simple. Since I also use Sainsbury's, here's how I did the split of my shop there on Monday:

"Miscellaneous" is indeed a bit of a catch-all. How often it gets used, though, is largely dependent on the way that other categories are drawn up and used. AceMoney comes with a set of predefined categories that might or might not be suitable. They're easy to edit, though, and I've found that I've got mine set up in such a way that I rarely need to use that catch-all.

turnitround

Not really answering your question but just as an aside-

I once started to do this but had extra columns for necessary items and impulse items I did not really need. For instance a bar of chocolate with the groceries or a magazine I did not really need. At the end of the week I got such a shock to see how much I spent on things a didnt really need or want.

I also had a friend who wrote Everything down in a book (way before we al had laptops and phones) she would tally up each night and tip the contents of her purse, change and receipts out onto the table. I remember going into work one morning and she told me she had been up till nearly 1am the previous night trying to work out where 3p had gone missing. 

blue.peter

PS - if you think that it might be useful, I'd be happy to share the list of categories that I use.

Jami74

B0bbyEwing said:

For example, a spend in Sainsbury's could be a number of categories rather than just "Supermarket". "Clothes" could be bought as could plants for the "garden" and just from that 1 spend I have to then break down the receipt in to 3 categories. 

For ease, I have a 'supermarket' category and regardless of what I spend it on, if it came from Sainsbury's it goes in that category. I don't split receipt totals and I accept that some clothes and non grocery items come from supermarket spends. I reconcile my spending from bank apps and don't use cash, so every penny is accounted for and I don't have to worry about lose change or working out which things on the receipt fall under which category. Similar to my 'petrol' category, if I pop into the forecourt shop and buy a chocolate bar with my petrol (extremely rare) or pay for a car wash, the whole amount is entered under petrol.

For miscellaneous, over the years some miscellaneous things have come up enough to have their own category for example I have a takeaway/eating out category that covers the occasional coffee or meal deal as well as a restaurant trip or visit to the chippy. For things that don't have a category, I'll enter a note describing what it is in case I ever look back.

lr1277

For me the purpose of recording everything is to reconcile with my various bank statements. However I sometimes forget what I have bought. The important thing is for the reports produced by the softwae match the bank/card statements on a line by line basis.

So I use Home Accountz (might still be on the internet but no longer supported).

I can record:

Date

Description

Payee

Amount Spent

From Account

To Account

I use Payee to record the retailer for example Amazon.,

The To account could record different spend categories e.g. groceries, health, electronics, software etc.

In the Description I can put in lists of items I bought.

So for example say I bought some vitamin supplements and software from Amazon I would record it as:

Description: Vit C + AV software

Payee: Amazon

For the To account, I would assign it the category of either the most important item or whichever was the biggest proportion of the spend. So in this care I might record it as software as that is what was the biggest proportion of the spend. But I can look back at that transaction and see I bought some Vitamin C too.

Also the from account would show the spend coming from my credit card and I can reconcile that against my creit card statement.

I also have a category for cash as I frequently forget the things I have bought with cash.

So I can record when I withdraw the cash and the items I bought with it.

There are certain spends where I don't record much detail. Say I buy from my supermarket, I will record this as groceries.I know my usual spending pattern. The only time I would add something to the payee column in this case if I bought from somewhere other than my usual supermarket.

HTH.

Edited to add: I suppose I should add I have a Not Known category. I reconcile every few days. And if the amount shown in cash remaining (for example) doesn't match how much cash I have, then I record the difference as Not Known. This is after trying to reconcile money coming in and money going out. This category has been use for both when I have too much money in a category and too little money. Sometimes the reconciliation works for example if I have forgotten to enter a spend or if I have 2 figures transposed. In which case I edit the record and don't need an entry for Not Known.

2nd edit: There was a period when I was only paying the minimum from my credit card. In this situation the amount owed shown by the software never matched what the online card statement showed. I think this was because the card provider added interest to the amount owed but never added it as a separate transaction on the statement. So the amount my system showed I owed would always be less than what the online statement stated. After I paid off the amount and paying off in such a way I didn't incur interest, then the 2 figures reconciled.

elsien

I don’t have a miscellaneous category - pretty much everything can be shoehorned into the existing categories somewhere.
If something becomes regular like charity donations I shove an extra column in but I’ve not found anything miscellaneous for a while now. 

I do try to split my headings between essential and nonessential.

So my health column covers Dentist optician, prescriptions etc with a Subcategory for gym/swimming as those could go if they had to.

Ditto food shopping has a separate column for alcohol for the same reason. It’s easier to see where the cutbacks might come in if things go pear-shaped.

i’m trying really hard not to look at my holiday column total so far! 

Sea_Shell

I track everything, and I split out Aldi shops into Groceries and clothes/household etc, if we buy anything 'middle aisle'.

I don't have a miscellaneous column.   Everything can go in other columns.

The only thing I struggled to categorise was a new watch.   My Garmin, I put under Health/Beauty, because it is only because I run/swim.   But my normal basic watch, I didn't know what to do with.    

I decided on "gifts".   Which we have a column for, as it was a gift to myself, even though it wasn't a gift gift IYSWIM.  It was only about £20.     I needed a battery for my best watch, that went under Household.

My categories are...

Bills (Utility DDs)

Holidays/Entertainment (everything "fun", including eating out and TV subs)

Car Expenses 

Groceries (includes day to day toiletries)

Household (anything home or garden related)

Health/Beauty (fitness, dental, physio, and any 'posh' (non-Aldi) toiletries - makeup, hair dye etc)

Clothes/Shoes

Fuel (petrol)

Gifts/Cards (anything we buy for others, or buy for ourselves that doesn't fit elsewhere)

Bank/ISA Fees

Phones/Calls (PAYG top ups and the phones themselves)

As long as you are consistent with what you put where, that's what matters, so you can see how your costs change over time. 

Hope that helps. 

MisterMotivated

I started doing this on a spreadsheet in 2007, when I was struggling to understand where all my money was going each month.  Over the years, the spreadsheet has evolved into something of a monster, with just over 100 tabs but I find it invaluable, especially now that my finances are rather more complex than just the 1 bank account and minimal bills I had back then.

Like some others above, I have a category column (e.g. Groceries), with a subcategory column that allows me to be more specific (as it's not based on a preset list).  It does have the dreaded "Miscellaneous" subcategory but I'm pleased to say that this year's only lists 8 items, so I might find other categories to squeeze them into.  A few years ago, I also added an "Avoidable?" column with a Yes/No input to highlight how much I spend on things I don't really need.  So far this year, I'm at £728!  Well, I was until I noticed I'd accidentally one of my mortgage payments as avoidable.  I might be a bit more relaxed on what I list as avoidable in 2024 as it's not just sweets/occasional lottery tickets/impulse buys in there, but includes things like a screwdriver I had to buy whilst away from home because I forgot to take one with me.  There's also a category listing where in the country (or if online) I bought something, but I may get rid of that column as it doesn't serve much purpose (even less so these days).

I'm glad to see this thread because I don't know anyone else who tracks their spend to the penny like I do (I'll admit to spending a little time over the years trying to reconcile discrepancies of a few pence here and there).

I've already started the process of getting a new spreadsheet ready for 2024 and am looking for ways to improve it, so it may grow further.

lr1277

With Home Accountz I can add all the categories. So I can go down to the level of detail I want.

Edited to add: I have no idea as to how the deep the sub-categories can be set up on Home Accountz. I have Main category and sub-category. But Home Accountz does provide a summary at top level category of all the sub-categories in that main category.

In terms of the top level categories, I use the ones in the Rich Dad Poor dad books i.e.

Assets, Income, Liabilities and Expenditure

So under assets I have: current accounts, savings accounts, premium bonds etc. No further granularity.

Under Income I have salary, wins, untaxed interest, ISA interest, Expenses and a few others.

Under liabilities I have entries for my credit card, used to have an entry for my mortgage, any loans.

Under Expenditure I have things like groceries, health, car parking, fuel etc.

The categories I have I built up over the last 17 years and they fit the amount of work I want to put into both the data entry and the reports I need.

Also some of my categories are so that I can easily complete a SA tax return. This was especially useful when I was renting out a flat.

I too track down to the penny especially with cash. Which is why I sometimes need the Not Known column.

HTH

Edited to remove some nonsenical text.

B0bbyEwing

Thanks for the responses.

I started it for a few reasons.

1) Quite simply, I wanted to know what was being spent where because of the way everything is shooting up in price while wages aren't, so something needs to give somewhere. I knew my wife was more spend-happy than me but at the same time it's not to 'spy' on her or whatever. She's fully on board with it. With our mortgage payments increasing very soon, we need to look to see where we can save money. It's no use making big sacrifices (dropping to 1 car is being considered at the moment) if we're throwing money away on silly little things so much that they add up to big things.

2) For retirement planning. I can't answer the "how much do I need in retirement" question because I've no idea what I'm spending. At least doing this will give me an indication of what I need. 

@blue.peter thank you for the offer. You can put here or send via PM if you don't mind.

I currently use the Google Sheets budgeting template. I'm not totally sold on it but I didn't feel I had the time to start with something more involved like budgeting software. I didn't want to start with something like that until I was satisfied I could give it the time it requires to learn it properly & set it up properly. The Google Sheets template looked pretty basic and good to go from the off with a few small tweaks.

Regards the categories, I've had to add things as I go along. Various things would crop up frequently or semi-frequently so they then got their own categories put in stone kind of thing. 

I break the little choccy spends down in to junk food. I don't want to be saying - looks like we spent a bit at the supermarket this month if the supermarket spend was totally fine but we ended up spending £30 on junk food each person kind of thing. 

Takeaways for sure has its own category. It's an area that actually annoys me & is something we need to better plan on so that when we're caught out we have something to fall back on rather than spending £20-£30 but I don't want to get too much in to that here as it'll go off topic. 


I've also had to spend a few weeks chipping away at catching up as we've/I've not kept on top of it, so a lot off cross-checking had to be done. Finally now up to date & we'll have to keep on top of it by making a point of updating the weeks outgoings at the end of each week.