I was telling @Oro how I’ve wanted to track my spending super-detailed for a while and also make an actual budget again. I totally fell off the April thread and am not sure I even tracked the whole month!
I have a computer at home again so I no longer have any excuse to keep putting this off, and Oro said they’d join me in budget blabbing so I realllllly have no reason to say no
I put this thread here mostly because I couldn’t decide which category, ha, but also because I internally start to rebel about halfway through challenges. Having an open ended thread hopefully will help me see this as a habit building, ongoing thing.
Okay, Go!
…I have to wait until I get home to look up my numbers
Yay!!
I’m IN. Gonna do a proper “fully tracked June” to make sure I’m where I think I’m at LOL. I will probably do just the one month, since for me obsessive behavior is its own thing I keep an eye on. heh.
Hahah it’s a plan! I’m fine either way, honestly. It being “just a thread” makes it possible for people to join and stop if they need to without it being a “you lose” situation. I’m a fan of things not being zero sum when possible.
I mean, to be clear, I’m doing a “track June” type thing. Where I confirm (or NOT lol) that what I think I spend IS what I spend. I’m not doing a ton of active control. There will probably be subconscious control seeing as one can’t study a thing without inherently changing it, etc.
But basically don’t think too highly of me, as that might be my plan, too.
I don’t budget, but I do track every spend. I’m not sure what there is to say about that, but maybe I can cheer people on who haven’t developed that habit yet (and want to).
My grocery store spending has gone through the roof since the pandemic started. It didn’t help that I was buying groceries for my parents (and obviously they paid me back, but it was hard to keep track of in my money spreadsheet). But I can’t decide if I want to try and reign it in, or keep buying endless fancy frozen yogurt bars because I can afford to. (Which is sort of a wild thought in itself.)
hehehehe I endorse you doing what you feel like. Including reigning it in OR keeping it on.
But yeah. I’m SUPER curious about my June groceries as I’m apparently on the gravy train of the grocery store and am happily siphoning off their ‘slightly out of date’ foods.
My pandemic spending has been more like “I’m coping with being a solo person by buying All The Things” so I definitely need a reality check on how my spending category percentages line up with my overall life values.
I use my own “system” in google sheets. It’s not super fancy but works for my needs!
I have a $$ spreadsheet with several tabs and one of them is for tracking spending. In theory. It was last updated in 2019 and needs a refresh LOL.
I just have an excel spreadsheet. I have like 5+ years worth of my spending data! Kinda crazy. I also don’t really budget, but always keep track of what I spend. I don’t think I could ever go back to not tracking anymore.
Mostly just following along. I try to update my numbers at the beginning of each month for the prior month. Automagically do the thing with quicken, then correct the categories quicken got wrong (this is much easier when we’re spending very little money in the pandemic), do the spreadsheet with stuff in categories - monthly fixed (like mortgage), monthly variable (like gas), then random stuff like I saw a shirt I wanted or Kiddo’s swimsuit needs to be replaced. I also have a net worth spreadsheet I update monthly. I think altogether it takes me two hours-ish? It took a long time to arrive at this system but it hits the sweet spot of not making me obsess over every purchase but still feeling informed and making it easy to see where we’d need to make adjustments. (Adjustments don’t happen as much now, but when I started years ago there was a “shopping” black hole budget line and the eating out costs, omg …)
I’ve tracked my spending in Quicken since 1997. My shiny new computer at that time came with a free trial. I later bought the full program. Since then I’ve gone between paying for the next version, using it until it is no longer supported, doing entirely manual entry until I get tired of it, then buying whatever the current iteration is. I’ve been in the manual entry phase of the current cycle for just over a year now.
ETA: I update it once or twice a month (always end of month and sometimes mid-month).
It being “just a thread” makes it possible for people to join and stop if they need to without it being a “you lose” situation. I’m a fan of things not being zero sum when possible. 
