keeping track of your money: C/D

I held on to all of my receipts for a year once, but it was more to look back and see what kind of bizarre diet I was living on when I was 24 years-old (or however old I was at the time...it was early twenties fer sure). If I recall, my documented eating habits involved many visits to Taco Bell...and many bags of potato chips.

I've been hanging on to grocery receipts lately, but now I am doing it to try to get a rough estimate as to how much I spend on food each week.

for the last three years I've kept my monthly bills in my head and approximate balance and have had no organization and I have 7k saved atm.

when I run out I go make more

I seriously need to call verizon though and bitch them out for a better deal

i dont get it, how was anyone supposed to know you were all hyperorganized & spreadsheeted as fuck??

and no, no one holds onto all their receipts.

He started a thread once about some organize-your-life system.

Of course there are people who hold onto all their receipts. You're vastly underestimating some folks' anal compulsiveness.

um, no. I try to look at my bank statement and credit card statements most of the time, though.

I should get one of those signs that says "One of these days I'm gonna get organezized".

i dont get it, how was anyone supposed to know you were all hyperorganized & spreadsheeted as fuck??
Getting Things Done (GTD) - Cult or Awesome?

It is obv wise and necessary to keep track of yr money, I just absolutely want NOT to do it if it means spreadsheets into which I enter hourly minutia. I do a good job mostly but I need to keep more shit in savings bcz the emergencias are what really fuck me over.

that's not called "keeping track of your money" that's called "having a separate oh shit account"

you guys do know that your bank pays other people to keep track of your personal spreadsheet for you, right?

also lol, people who still balance their own checkbook

I pay someone to clip coupons for me.

i need to start doing this more, since i'm saving for The Big Move. i'm totally crappola when it comes to managing my finances, which is probably why i never have any goddamn money. working shitty jobs does not help.

i've managed to save almost 2k in the last couple of months, but i have no social life anymore and basically live on toast and tea so my outgoing costs are minimal.

if you go and visit your bank's website once a day when you leave work, that is all the close track of your finances you need to keep, until you grow up and have five figures in multiple investments and two mortgages.

lol at those people you seen on tv who wash their hair with dish detergent, clip every single coupon, have no ph, use candlelight and take cold showers - "i've been living this way for 40yrs and now i got me $1 million in the bank!".

and the number one way to save money in the whole world proven by science is to clear out the balances on your credit cards, cut them up or hide them in a drawer or something, and then every time you get paid you immediately transfer $xxx out of checking and into "oh shit" or "savings" or whatever other account that you don't have an ATM card for.

None of this is hard!!!! just don't get married.

I use Quicken 2002.

you've been married for five years?

Dued Tombot that is what I do! A-checka the bank site and I get to look at my "safe picture" which is a stapler. The picture happies my day. I just don't make enough to have what is always the necessary 'oh shit1" amt (which has been up to 2k sometimes and is not at like $0).

actually I should not be posting to this thread at all since I now have like -$560 on my discover card (yes, a credit on my credit card. the credit card company owes me money. no they will not pay me interest) because I paid it through my bank's online billpay without double-checking my balance

I also have a cider jug that's a quarter-full of dimes.

I've started to do this more - having an automatically deducted mortgage payment and a primary breadwinner who gets paid over 9 months kind of forces you to plan and divert funds to separate accounts a bit - but I'm still rotten about keeping track of my minutia and knowing how much I'm spending money on food, beer, travel, etc.

January 1st, maybe?

Keeping track of money would be classic, but I'm not very good at it. The upside is that I'm also pretty good at not spending money, so it doesn't hurt me much.

My husband is the opposite: he tends to spend more, but then he also keeps track of money with some complicated budget system he has worked out with Quicken.

I do keep a separate checking account, so that if money gets tight, we fall back on the money I've been sitting on.

The problem is that it is only people who earn a lot of money already who feel strong enough to examine their bank statements and credit card bills in detail.

I only manage a quick glance without feeling overcome by depression.

I can't even get that far. I've come to be afraid of envelopes in general at this point.

I empathize! As I told a friend a few hours ago:

"I'm sick of pulling up my account balance and wondering why the hell there are only $12 in there. Now that I'm keeping track of it, I'll know exactly why there's only $12."

i suck at this.
overdraft charges will be the end of me!!

so classic. you save a LOT with just a little attention to your funds/

online banking is a godsend for me, if only because i can look at "pending transactions" and see what hasn't yet cleared my account, allowing me to see what the "posted balance" is vs. "available balance" - often very different. before that i would rely on checking balances from atm receipts, which don't tell you obviously what has or hasn't cleared. before online banking i would overdraw several times a year, now i never do.

i also stopped having the bank send me those monthly account activity reports, as they're never up to date. i can check my account activity daily now.

if you go and visit your bank's website once a day when you leave work, that is all the close track of your finances you need to keep, until you grow up and have five figures in multiple investments and two mortgages.

-- El Tomboto, Thursday, December 6, 2007 11:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Exactly. As long as I'm able to keep putting my rather generous set automatic amount into savings every month, pay my bills, have some fun and never watch my balance tempt double digits, I don't see the need for further organization. If I want to see where my money is flying off to, I can just go over my statements.

I was gonna start a thread like this the other day.

I've just been writing down everything I buy/pay for in whatever way in a Word doc for a few months, which is all very well but doesn't seem to save me money so much as, I fear, subconsciously make me feel like my spending is justified cos I'm keeping track of it. NB I live pretty hand to mouth at the best of times so TBH the only major thing I could do as a favour to myself is quit drinking, and, well, that's not gonna happen

i'm no financial whizzzzz but i made a couple of moves that have helped me out immensely: i do everything online. do direct deposit, and get all of your bills set up online with your bank. i get an email alert every time a new bill 'arrives' online, and i pay them all through the bank's webpage. it costs like 5 bucks a month, your bank may do it for free. now i can safely ignore any and all junk mail and put bills through the shredder w/o even opening them. the only thing i have to write a check for and mail is my rent (luckily the mgmt slides the envelope under my door every month on the 25th.)

instead of kicking yourself for not saving, make the decisions to save upfront: i have about 10% of my check diverted out of my direct deposit into a savings acct. i did this w/ my employer but you can get your bank to do automatic transfers too.

xp yeah ok what everyone else is saying!

im in the tombot/hurting camp. i check my balance like once a week, strict budgeting and documentation = zzz

xp yea also paying bills online rules

online billing is a good idea - I think I'm going to do that.

WAHT IS YOUR TIME WORTH PEOPLE?

i spend until i run out every week, normally i don't starve.

Plus, like, if you're disciplined enough to make a detailed budget, you're probably also disciplined enough to just say, gee I've been eating out a lot lately and my balance is a bit low and I have that credit card bill, so it's spaghetti tonight. And if you're not disciplined enough to do even that, there's no way you're going to manage a strict budget.

But then some people just like budgets, I guess, god bless em.

I've got an account that gives me a decent APY but only if I make ten debit purchases a month. Each month is like a timer version of Galaga.

i have a morbid fear of dying without owing large sums of money to banks.

lol